CHEW-Z is the name that Philip K. Dick uses in “The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch” to refer to the new drug pushed to terrestrian colonists on Mars in order to divert their minds from their unbearable and boring existence. Chew-Z is the upgraded version of another drug, legally admitted, which was not able to defeat boredom and uneasiness, but which could only give disneylike hallucinations that would increase their feelings and sense of monotony. With Chew-Z, colonists discover a product that is not easily distribuited but that allows experiences literally out of this world.
A creation by Fabio Battistetti and Daniele Pagliero, Chew-Z is a project born for making the diffusion of alternative and uneasily distribuited music possible by using the internet .
In the last decade, both of the projects promoters have been increasingly active on the Italian underground scene, both as musicians and as producers of independent music.
Both creators have shared their experiences and knowledge on the diffusion of advanced forms of music (for example: artistic expressions not limited to only pure entertainment), which has led to the birth of this idea of eliminating the obstacle of canonical record label.
In Italy there are extraordinary musicians who have revolutionary and innovatory senses of art, but due to a lack of funds or “spirit of entrepreneurship”, they have just no audience, apart from a very narrow circle of authorized people or enthusiasts who get into a web page by chance or go sporadically to a live concert.
Usually, an Italian musician has to: study, excercize, compose, search for new contacts, and on top of that, get a job to substain those activities because unfortunately a large part of the time these are not paid.
Bearing in mind this paradox, the basic idea of Chew-Z is to overcome those experiences “do it yourself” and become a free association of artists who can share difficulties and who can support themselves, hoping to reach a vast audience this way and share their experiences both in a musical and promotional ambiance.
Chew-Z's goal is to share and get to know all of the independent and experimental music activities. As a consequence it aims to introduce valuable unpublished works by inspiring new musicians to larger music craving audiences.
Chew-Z wants to offer a space and give visibility to these new realities, making available free material, organizing gigs, promoting artists and their works through a net of independent labels, making reviews, publishing compilations.
Chew-Z starts as an independent space but aims at people interested in producing music and gives the value of the composition and the value of the artist an essential importance.
The proliferation of new spaces and ways of diffusion are nowadays giving an unlimited number of musicians the opportunity of express themselves and are radically changing the way music is produced and distributed.
Chew-Z has chosen to follow this way in order to diffuse what in the music area is “different”, “future” and generally “non conventional”. At present we can avail of a website, free spaces online and the promotion of the works through our contacts.
It is not unlikely that in the future Chew-Z may make its own publications available by other means: for instance, periodical issues of samplers of the label in cd audio format have already been programmed.
http://www.chewz.net
Chew-Z runs a radio show (trough Radio Flash) about the music of netlabels, you can listen from here:
W A L K M A N podcast. The radio show is live on Radio Flash 97.6 (Torino), every saturday at 10pm.
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