The Herd, Urthboy & More School Us On The Early Days Of Iconic DIY Label Elefant Traks

31 October 2018 | 3:09 pm | Cyclone Wehner

To celebrate their upcoming 20th anniversary, Cyclone chats with the key players of Aussie independent label Elefant Traks. All photo captions written by Unkle Ho, Rokpostya and Urthboy (from the Herd).

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The Australian independent label Elefant Traks (or 'ET') – home to such acts as The Herd, Hermitude and Horrorshow – is celebrating its 20th anniversary this November with a lavish events program that includes The Elefant In The Room, an evening of stories. 

The Sydney-based stable began as a beats collective led by bedroom producer Kenny "Traksewt" Sabir. In 1998 he curated Elefant Traks' inaugural release: the "eclectic" compilation Cursive Writing. Today, Elefant Traks' history is intertwined with that of the hip hop supergroup, The Herd – the label engendering collabs out of compilations. In 2004, Sabir – who'd already spent a year overseas – stepped away from Elefant Traks to pursue a career in IT. He left the admin to Tim Levinson (The Herd's MC Urthboy). 

We were pretty stoked when someone had defaced this billboard ahead of The Herd's second album, An Elefant Never Forgets (2003). 

Elefant Traks gained momentum as The Herd crossed over into the ARIA Top 10 with 2008's Summerland, while Hermitude unexpectedly became EDM stars (and won the Australian Music Prize for HyperParadise). Inherently multicultural, and artist-focussed, Elefant Traks heralded an individualistic, diverse and hybridised hip hop and electronic scene in Australia. The hands-on fold readily adapted to the digital era. Indirectly, Elefant Traks launched Caiti Baker via Sietta. Latterly, it's introduced us to the polymath Indigenous artist Jimblah, cred MCs L-FRESH The LION and B Wise, plus the avant-soul OKENYO. Here, key players tell the ET origin tale.

Poster bomb protesting against the war in Iraq 2003, King St Newtown near Martin Luther King mural. We used to do all our own postering for every release and tour - late night missions on our pushies. My colleague at the record store at the time said I compromised the act by having our own Elefant branding on there. He was right.

Kenny "Traksewt" Sabir, Elefant Traks founder and co-director: "I come from a band background and I got into electronic music. The things I was looking up to were Underworld, what's happening with Ninja Tune and Warp Records… There wasn't that kind of alternative here… It's like, 'How come Australia doesn't have this – why can't we do it now?'" 

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Richard Tamplenizza, aka The Herd producer/guitarist Sulo, and former Elefant Traks publicist: "My sister was the connect between myself and Kenny – 'cause my sister is two years older than me. She was studying at university and she somehow found out about this guy. She was actually working at 2SER, the community radio station here in Sydney… I put together a little demo and then I dropped it at [Sabir's] house. I slipped it under [the door of] a share house he was living in; in Surry Hills. Then he got back to me, just like, 'Yeah, this is great – do you wanna put it out?' I was like, 'Yeah, absolutely.' I was actually 16 at the time when I did that. So I was still in school. So the thought of putting out music was so foreign – it was very exciting and just like, 'Wow, what the hell!' Yeah, it was a crazy thought. I was completely naive. I had no idea about any of the industry or anything like that."

Apsci, on tour with The Herd. Elefant Traks released Apsci's first album 'Get It Twisted' in 2003. They eventually signed with US label Quannum, a collective that includes DJ Shadow and Blackalicious.

Sabir: "I'd take a receipt book and was going around the different [record] stores, dropping off CDs on consignment and then checking them off in a week or two, if they sold… Then we started going on holidays to Melbourne and Brisbane and taking packs of CDs with us as well. So we started distributing up and down the coast. After a while, we had this big network set up."

Tim Levinson, aka Urthboy, and Elefant Traks managing director: "I think I just was predisposed to that organising role. So, when Kenny was driving the label and there were people like Kaho [Cheung, aka Unkle Ho] and a guy called Simon Fellows and, to some extent, Byron [Williams, aka The Herd's other guitarist Toe-Fu] and Shannon [Kennedy, aka rapper Ozi Batla], I just gravitated to Kenny and to wanting to participate in it. 

"There was not really a specific role to cover, but it was just that gravitation to something that was happening and wanting to be part of it. I didn't really have a great skill set, but I had a natural inclination to help out, in a way. So, over time, that changed from manual tasks like assembling CDs – literally like jewel cases and artwork that had been hand-printed – through to postering flyers; going out and just doing all nighters. We were putting posters up around the local area for gigs or even just releases. 

The Herd, Geelong.

"I guess it went through to actually sitting down with Kenny and working with him on some of the tasks that needed to be done… But, then, he got a job and went off into another field, where he started working full-time. I suppose that was the first time that I really completely took over the reins. So I think it was just that I was a sucker that was willing to do it."

Sabir: "[The label] was a hard slog for the first five years – like it wasn't something [where] I paid myself when I was setting it up. So I'd be working part-time, two days a week or something, doing computer jobs and stuff like that. After a while, I realised that wasn't for me, doing the day-to-day. I liked setting it up and starting it up, but I wanted to set up and start up other things as well."

The Herd, Woolgoolga - back in the day when we used to drive to Brisbane. 

Jane Tyrrell, The Herd singer-songwriter: "I met The Herd in, I think, 2004 when I was supporting them in a support band. They were at that time I think nine members – and it had swollen above nine, 10 sometimes… I came in for [the album] The Sun Never Sets as a guest artist, 2005… And The Herd at that time maybe kinda crystallised. So the members that had been in and out was settled. Lots of people were getting their full-time jobs and having less time to do the work of the label and others had the time to commit."

Tamplenizza: "I think one of the advantages with Elefant Traks has always been how it started with Kenny and [us] being very hands-on. That DIY ethos has really created strong foundations for the label. We sort of taught ourselves to do everything – and that included helping out artists with management and stuff like that. As the years have gone on, I think the management side has probably become more important. That's probably been an industry trend as well. Labels have to be a little bit more versatile in how they operate because everything's changed now. People don't go out and buy those records anymore. So I think, in a lot of ways, the ethos that started it all hasn't changed, but everything around us has! The environment has definitely changed."

Traksewt deep in concentration on the pool table. Brisbane, The Zoo.

Tyrrell: "I'd studied Fine Arts and Graphic Design and, like Tim, I enjoyed just being involved, basically. In that way, I moved into what we referred to as the 'Elefant Traks Mansion' in Enmore shortly after joining the band – because we were travelling so much. I was in there with Tim and the boys putting together the CDs and sending off mail and learning the ropes as well. Also, by accident – and with joy – just collaborations would happen 'cause you'd be around. Somebody would be like, 'Hey, you wanna do this?' So I started doing things like cover art and more guest vocals and photo shoots, art direction, and graphic design. That led into many, many years of doing that for Elefant Traks, and kind of unofficially for many of the acts, and eventually my own album [2014's Echoes In The Aviary]!"

Levinson: "The label started, not as a hip hop label, but as a mess – like a dog's breakfast. We were [doing] a compilation of folk songs, electronic songs, hip hop songs – it was all over the place. You would not have been able to take from those first couple of compilations any inkling of what it would become, because it was more about the spirit. It had a punk, DIY spirit. It was a number of the different artists involved who wanted to create music that wasn't in any way mainstream in Australia. So it was more about the ideas than the genre. Over time, particularly with The Herd becoming a bit popular, we tended to find other people working in similar spaces. So that's what led to it becoming a little bit more hip hop-focussed… I feel, in the last seven or eight years, we've really tried to get back to that fact that we're not just a hip hop label. It's more about the spirit of it."

The Herd playing a benefit for worker's rights - Rockin' for Rights at the SCG - in 2007.

Sabir: "I feel like [Elefant Traks], just like music, is a living thing – you sort of keep on changing and moving and evolving. That's one of the reasons why we've survived. We're not afraid to be fast-moving and change with the times. I guess, by doing that, there is that ethos of we wanna do well with the artists as well. We never started out, getting into making a label, to make a buck or to become famous. We did it 'cause we all really loved music... So the legacy is surviving one of the most tumultuous periods of the music business. There's not that many [labels], apart from the majors, that are still around these days, compared to when we started."

The ET20 celebrations kick off on 1 Nov.