Futurism Restated 99: Longform Editions’ Andrew Khedoori on Close Listening in an Era of Distraction
With their final batch—from Fennesz, Tujiko Noriko, Natalia Beylis, and whait, aka Wendy Eisenberg and more eaze—the label goes out on a high note.
(Note: I mistakenly called Andrew “Mark,” the name of his label partner, in the original headline of this piece; it’s been corrected on the web, but the subject line of all the emails still contains the error. My apologies!)
Sydney, Australia’s Longform Editions began with a simple yet unusual proposition: to release standalone, single-track pieces of music that engage with the idea of duration, typically at between 20 and 40 minutes a pop.
What would you call recordings like this? Are they albums? Maybe; they’re certainly not singles, although the occasional Longform Editions track might turn up on a Spotify playlist, or in Pitchfork’s track-reviews section. For the most part, the label’s releases floated free of conventional categories. And the label’s sound did too, mapping out a broad array of ambient and ambient-adjacent moods and techniques, without ever solidifying into a particular style.
Implicit in the idea was the importance of slowing down—of resisting the whirlpool churn of contemporary digital culture and the flattening of the listening experience associated with streaming. But Longform Editions’ model never privileged scarcity for scarcity’s sake, either; every bimonthly drop featured four different releases—meaning that keeping up with their outwardly slim output could actually take, paradoxically, quite a bit of effort.
After seven years and 168 releases, Longform Editions is closing up shop. The label recently announced that its latest batch, LE42, will be its last. Longform Editions has built up an enviable roster over the years; an abbreviated list of contributors includes Caterina Barbieri, Pan American, Bitchin Bajas, Shy Layers, Penelope Trappes, Carmen Villain, K. Leimer, claire rousay, Taylor Deupree, Sofie Birch, Sam Prekop, Ka Baird, Angel Bat Dawid, Eiko Ishibashi, William Tyler, Fuubutsushi, Phew, Jules Reidy, Ulla, KMRU, Lia Kohl, Valentina Magaletti, Cole Pulice, Stephen Vitiello with Brendan Canty and Hahn Rowe—the list just goes on and on. And they’re going out on a high note: The final drop, out Feb. 12 (Australian time) on the label’s Bandcamp page, comes from Fennesz, Tujiko Noriko, Natalia Beylis, and whait, better known as the duo of Wendy Eisenberg and mari maurice, aka More Eaze.
I interviewed co-founder Andrew Khedoori for Pitchfork five years ago; as soon as I learned that he and his co-founder, Mark Gowing, were shutting down the label, I reached out to him to pick up the conversation.
The restlessness of Longform Editions’ output feels like a direct reflection of Khedoori’s personality: In conversation, he overflows with a cheerful enthusiasm that you might not expect from his label’s often contemplative cast. There were no great bombshells in our talk; the long and the short of things is that they accomplished what they’d set out to do, and want to spend more time with their families. I came away from our call still sad that the label is going away, but heartened by Khedoori’s positive attitude. More than anything, I was inspired by their determination to try to create something different, something that didn’t really fit music-industry conventions—and stuck by it, in spite of all the pitfalls of their model.
Read on for the full interview, in which Khedoori discusses the stresses and joys of running a label like Longform; the difficulties they had in getting press for material that slipped between established categories; and the careful balance of intuition and intention that they tried to strike with their releases.
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Hi Andrew! So after seven years, and 168 releases, you’re winding up Longform Editions. Why?
It’s nothing dramatic, really. It feels like the right time to do it. Doing something like Longform Editions, its cyclical nature means you have to work at it at a particular pace. Every two months, we have four releases. They’re four substantial releases, and they need time and work and love. We still have a lot of creative energies—Mark is transitioning in his career from being one of the best graphic designers in the world to being an artist. He’s working really hard on that side of things, moving into that full time. And for me, my daughter’s starting school in four weeks. I really want to just be ever-present and have that energy. It just felt like the right time simply to not do the label.
I don’t think that Longform Editions has run its course. We love it. We love doing it. It’s just where we’re at at the moment. I’m the kind of guy who will do something forever unless something big makes me rethink that. I had a newspaper run all through high school, getting up at four in the morning, and my parents were like, “You won’t last.” And I did it for years. I just kept going and going and going. That’s me: I just keep moving forward. It’s been such a treat to have that in my life, and wake up every morning and speak to an artist about what they’re doing. But it has its demands as well, especially when you’re looking at the kind of schedule we had. It’s not been draining, but it’s just the right time really to look elsewhere.
What’s the day-to-day of it been like? Four new releases every two months—just finding the time to listen to demos must be hard. You were fielding a lot of material. And then the logistics of working with artists on different continents. It must have been a lot.
It might sound like a lot, but it’s also a real pleasure. I mean, I will listen to anything, anytime, that anyone has sent. If anybody had thought of us, that’s a privilege that we don’t take lightly. It doesn’t matter who it is, I’ll listen and take it in and see where it sits within what we’re working on. And I think the catalogue reflected that. You had people doing pieces for us who you might know, but you might not have expected doing pieces for us, which I think was a really great thing. And then people that you might not ever have heard of doing work for us as well. It’s just a great motivator throughout the day to be receiving music and correspondence from people whose music you love, or stimulating your curiosity when somebody sends you a piece of work.
I mean, when you’re in Australia, you’re kind of like, wow, someone’s messaged me from another side of the world with a piece of music. Of course I’m going to listen to it. A lot of people wake up and want to hear something familiar that carries them through the day. I have that tendency too, but a big part of me is what I haven’t heard, so that’s a great motivator for me. I stretch my day out pretty long—I get up super early in the morning, and I have a desk job, so the headphones are on a lot of the time and I’m just listening all day, taking it all in. And I’m a regular correspondent, I love rapid-fire exchanges with people about ideas. I come in early and have Zoom calls with artists and it’s great. It’s so much fun, just getting together with people whose music that you’ve admired for a while and talking to them about what you can do together. It’s a joy.
What percentage of your catalog would you say were things you solicited from artists, versus demos that people sent to you and you were like, “We gotta put this out.”
I’d say the majority was commissioned, or I’d been introduced via someone saying, “Yeah, check this out.” But I was really driven to pursue artists that I thought would contribute something really great to what we were doing. I sought some artists that perhaps hadn’t had that kind of canvas to stretch out on before. And the response from artists has been amazing. I was just speaking to one the other day who said, “You know, working on this piece for Longform Editions has really shaped the way I work on all my music,” because of the perspective that comes with having that canvas and that space—the focus, the concerted focus. I think everything with Longform Editions has to do with intuition and intention. And if you can mix those two and get the balance, I think you’re often going to get some really thrilling and engaging pieces of music.
So commissioning those works was a big part of it. Approaching people and saying, “We’ve got this space—I love what you’re doing, and I’d love to see what could happen here.” More often than not, people responded with amazing pieces of work. Nothing ever felt phoned in, which was always a real honor. No one ever said, “I’ve got this 20-minute piece that’s been sitting on my hard drive and I’ve never known what to do with it.” You know, Longform Editions wasn’t just about duration, it was about what the space can allow.
That could also be an interesting situation, though—to be the space where somebody could find a home for something unusual that the artist didn’t know what to do with. It wouldn’t necessarily have to be a stray or a leftover.
It did stoke that fire. I was talking to one of the Longform artists the other day and I was surprised to find out, because they’re incredibly prolific, how much anxiety they had about creating work and who might take it on. And what they found from doing something for Longform Editions was that the space to explore was set, and there was an outlet for what they wanted to do. I was surprised, because this person’s just releasing stuff left, right, and center. I was like, oh, OK, you’re creating but you’re not really sure what’s going to happen with it; I think that’s got to be part of the process. I think that Longform probably tickled that creativeness in a slightly different way, and gave the impetus to do that, which I’m thrilled about. I never thought it would have that kind of effect on artists.
If I might ask, was the label profitable, or did it at least break even?
We set the label up to be bulletproof from all the industry trappings that not only ensure that quite often the music doesn’t come first, but also that the finances have to be a major consideration. We just wanted to release this music in a way that was going to be smooth and easy for us. The terms were really simple. Everybody understood what it was going to be. We essentially de-monetized the series. The price point was really low. And we kept it consistent. We had four releases every two months, so we were always bobbing around. I think once we removed all the typical industry trappings of typical releases on typical formats, it just found its way to people after a while, probably because the music was good. And yes, we made money, we got to the point where we were able to afford advances, cover the mastering. Simon Scott from Slowdive approached us and said he’d love to do the mastering, and was very generous with his rate. I can’t thank him enough for making these pieces sound the way they did. So we definitely had money. We’ve always been hovering around 250 subscribers, which I think is great. And then people buying individual pieces as well, so we were able to pay artists and keep things going.
You had another label before this one. Is there anything you learned from running Longform that was new to you this time around?
I think the simple thing was that we didn’t want to run it like a label. We just wanted to remove ourselves from those industry trappings. I was thinking about this on the way here this morning. The Australian industry is quite reggressive and quite bottlenecked as a result. In the post-COVID environment, nothing really new has been conjured to get it out of the crisis that it’s in. It’s just stuck in its old ways. Format in particular is really strange. When we were doing Preservation, even though it was essentially exploratory or experimental music, working in a smaller environment, when you release something on a typical format, like an LP or CD, you immediately get cast into this pool with all the other stuff that’s competing for space and airtime and press. Strangely enough, the first release that we ever did was a pop record that Oren Ambarchi did, which was quite a new thing for him. And it got great airplay on the national broadcaster, which was the major tastemaker and influencer at the time. And suddenly, you know, we were this brand new label that was going to be really exciting. But we didn’t continue that way. And I remember the next release we did was like a double CD release of 24 Australian experimental artists. I mean, there was someone who had recorded a fax machine and made a piece of music out of that. And I remember a couple of journalists saying, “This is not what I expected after the Oren Ambarchi pop record.” We just couldn’t fit in. It was tough. Because I work in the music industry, you know, the subtext was quite often, like, “What’s going on with Preservation, when are you going to release something that works again?” It was sort of this comment on your A&R skills. We never really saw ourselves as A&R people, but that’s how things were geared.
Similarly, we had some problems with third parties—distributors who shut up shop, or didn’t pay us, or things like that. And when we had this idea about releasing works of duration, we said, well, how can we do this in a way that those things are just completely removed? And so whatever happens, it’ll be OK. If it gets press, great. If it doesn’t, that’s OK. You know, if it gets a niche audience, that’ll be fine. We have jobs. So we weren’t reliant on this for anything else other than our own fulfillment and to put something great out into the world because we love music and we want to contribute to what it gives to us. So we just sat down and worked it out.
And by the time we hit peak digital era, it made sense to do Longform Editions in that way, not just because you can’t really release a 72-minute piece on vinyl easily, but it just made sense to use those systems. Maybe five years before, it wouldn’t have had that kind of traction.
What I found really interesting about Longform Editions, what really struck me in the last year or so, was how tied to decades-old formats the industry is, no matter what kind of music you make. The amount of responses I got from people who said, “This piece of music is amazing, but we only review albums and singles.” I’m like, whatever happened to reviewing a piece of music? It just really surprised me how tied we are to what was a major-label initiative to package music as a commercial venture. People who are open to the kind of music that Longform Editions released, it was amazing how many people would say, “This is brilliant,” and I’m like, are you going to do something with it? And they go, “I love it so much, but we only review albums.”
Pitchfork was certainly guilty of this as well. We have covered your releases over the years, but not often. Often, I think, it was because a given release wasn’t really conducive to the typical five-paragraph, 800-word review format, but at the same time, it’s too much for a track review.
I found that fascinating. That Pitchfork’s columns of reviews were tied to that. And I just thought, especially in the digital world, aren’t we beyond that? One time I sort of took the bait a little bit, and I had a conversation with an editor of a major magazine. I thought, your whole premise, this whole magazine is about covering artists who have been risk takers in other eras, and presented works that challenged and provoked people and been lauded for that. But when it comes to the present day, anything that does anything remotely similar has to fit into the format before you can actually cover it. And I thought, that’s a really weird irony. I mean, Longform Editions got more coverage than I ever would have anticipated, but it was generally about what it was, rather than individual reviews. Which I always found interesting. There must have been—with Cole Pulice, for example, there must have been so much love and favor for that piece, like, “We’ve just gotta do it.”
That one broke through.
I asked Cole recently, since we handed over the piece—because it still keeps going, I think it was nominated as one of the best tracks of the past half decade. It’s probably the biggest track in the catalog, the one that just keeps going. And I asked Cole, since you’ve had it on your own Bandcamp, how many sales have you had? And he said he’d had about 10 or 15 sales. But at the same time, that track had gotten him a booking agent, shows, stuff like that. So there were great outcomes there. But it’s an interesting scenario. I just can’t believe we are still so stuck to format. Even The Wire, which isn’t the magazine I was talking about earlier. Even The wire, the only reviews we ever got was if the artist had released an album, and there was a Longform piece running around the same time, it was an addendum. I just thought, this is so bizarre that you need to fit into that pool.
But we definitely exceeded my expectations. We were just going to have a nice little low-level project that we would just keep releasing quietly, and I think we got a lot further than that. Obviously I think COVID was where we had our purple moment. We seemed to have a patch there where people had more time, and Longform Editions demanded that time.
Looking back, are there any things you wish you’d done differently?
No, because it’s been a real thorough pleasure. I’m kind of surprised that it worked as smoothly and as well as it did for so long. I haven’t heard back from any artists saying they were disappointed with the experience. We even had a major Zoom chat—we had about 10 artists on the line and sent information to other artists, to discuss some changes we wanted to make to the label. After one year we would hand the piece over, 100 percent, to the artists. We spoke to them about things we could be doing differently—should we be on streaming services, is the price point too low, you know—and everyone seemed really happy with what we were doing. So we kind of knew from feedback that it seemed to be fine, and we were happy to carry on in the same way that we had.
We just wanted to keep it simple. There was one artist in the Zoom who said, “What’s the future for Longform Editions?” The question was how we were going to evolve it, and I just said, I don’t think we are. We’ve had some other opportunities; we worked with the Art Gallery of New South Wales here a couple times on some great projects. They invited us to produce some installations for their Volume Festival last year, and we released a few pieces that connected with a Sol LeWitt exhibition that they curated in 2023. They were great opportunities, but we didn’t seek them out—we just wanted to travel along in the way that we were working toward: releasing great music with consistency and having a platform that was a reliable and valuable source of listening if you wanted to engage in something, four pieces every two months. We just hoped there would be—not something for everyone, but something that somebody could lock into and enjoy and have a great listening experience.
Last time we spoke, you said you had founded the label in part as a reaction to the clutter of contemporary streaming and digital music, digital everything. Eight years on, how do you feel about that digital clutter?
It doesn’t seem to have changed very much. Obviously, the digital era has meant a lot of passive listening. People might tell you that they’re listening to more music, but in reality, the way streaming services are set up, how much are you really listening to, I think, is the question. Obviously the noise around streaming services has gotten louder, and deservedly so. I still think listening to music digitally is reasonable and a great way to listen to music accessibly. I think the patronage of music is obviously a deeply troubling thing. If you look at the amount of subscribers to Longform Editions at its peak, we got close to 260 subscribers, but we’ve got thousands and thousands of people listening to the Bandcamp and streaming. And I’m happy that they’re willing to engage. But of course you’d like artists to be compensated in a decent way for what they do.
I think that’s the problem with digital clutter. The infinite library is providing you that opportunity to take something on, listen to it, you say you’ve experienced it, but where does that leave the artist? But you know, will people go to a show, will they buy a t-shirt? I’m sure there’s people who have bought Longform Editions t-shirts but never a piece of the music. And you can’t say they’re not fans because they haven’t paid for it. I think that’s a really hard line, to say you’re not a fan of this music if you haven’t paid for it. And I know that there’d be quite a few artists who would probably bristle at that statement, but everybody’s got their own individual pain points. Finances are tough. Do we deny them things as a result of where they’re at? Maybe I’m going off the subject a bit, but I think it’s an interesting point. Where does artistic pursuit have to bump up against commerce to make it substantial or worthwhile?
Thankfully, I feel like all the artists that contributed to Longform Editions knew exactly where this was at. There were so many conversations I had—I remember one of my real pleasures was talking and corresponding with Wadada Leo Smith, who I’m a huge fan of. I had this idea to ask him to take part and I thought it was probably a bit of a long shot. But he immediately said yes. We had this Zoom call and I just said to him, straight up, “Look, I just want to flag with you, there’s not really any money in this. You’re not going to make more than a few hundred bucks.” And he just went, that’s OK.
I had the same conversation with Will Oldham, who was really interested; we never got around to doing anything, but I had great correspondence and a great Zoom chat with him, and I just wanted him to know there was not going to be any money in this, and he said, that’s not a problem. You know, there are people out there that believe in that, and they just want to keep working, and having opportunities to work. I think that artistic pursuit is a really important thing in the face of that digital clutter—just keep going, keep yourself out there.
Tell me a little bit about this newest and, I guess, last batch. You’ve got Fennesz, Natalia Baylis, Tojiko Noriko, and the duo of Wendy Eisenberg and more eaze. It’s kind of an all-star affair.
It wasn’t planned that way. I mean, we just had the music. Mark and I had been talking probably since around April last year about moving towards closing things. And we were dedicated to the artists whose work we said that we wanted to release and who had made works for us. Fennesz’s piece was one of the works that was part of the Volume Festival last year. That was ready around June or July last year, but Mosaic came out at the end of last year and Christian just said, look, can we hold off? Natalia was similar, someone I’ve been talking to for quite a long time, and they delivered their piece late last year, ready to roll. Same with Tujiko.
The interesting thing about whait, which is Wendy Eisenberg and more eaze—before we were definitive about a closure date for the label, I asked Wendy if they’d like to take part. Then mari maurice spoke to me, and said, “I think I’m ready to do another piece for you,” and I was like, great, but then I thought, I’m not going to be able to fit them both in. So I messaged mari and said, I’m wondering whether you might consider joining up and doing a piece. And I don’t even think a microsecond had passed, and there was this email in capital letters, “YES,” in my inbox. And mari said, “Wendy’s in the other room and just screamed out yes!” I was like, great, this is awesome, that’s easy. I think they’d only ever recorded one piece before and they were really excited about that opportunity. That’s such a great scenario, for Longform Editions to engender that kind of creative outlet that might not have occurred otherwise. They were really excited about it and poured everything into it. It’s a great piece of music. So that’s where we’re at.
What will happen with the Bandcamp—will it stay up?
No. Our policy has been for some time that after 12 months, we hand the piece over to the artist’s Bandcamp page and they receive 100 percent of the sales. If you look at the Bandcamp, there are just the current 24 pieces. So typically in February, the pieces from last February would be handed over. If the artist wants to keep it on their Bandcamp, it remains there, and if they take it down, then it’s gone.
And will they stay on streaming services?
For the ones that are on streaming, we’re going to release those pieces to the artists as well. We’ll be sending them all the metadata and so forth, and hopefully they’ll just put them back up. That’s what we hope for. That’s the only possibility around closing things, that the catalogue may not be as intact as it has been. But, you know, we’ve essentially said that we’re the licensee of these pieces, and there’s a timeline for us to hand them back. It’s the artist’s piece of work, and they can do whatever they want with it from that point on.
My last question: What will you do next? I know that you’ll continue to have a day job, in addition to what you’ve been doing with Longform.
I haven’t planned on anything, but I have an idea that I’m working on at the moment. I was listening to some of the Longform pieces, cleaning the house, and I thought it’d be nice to do something with that person again, and I started thinking. So I have an idea, and I’m speaking to a couple of the Longform artists about it. I’m not trying to be secretive, but I want it to be fully formed and ready. But it would be a similar mindset to what Longform Editions has been. The artwork would come from Mark, but it would be almost an inversion, if you like, of what Longform has been, but with the same kind of artistic momentum. It’s just about resetting the speed, but keeping the creative pursuit and working toward some really interesting ideas.
You’re going to be doing ringtones, then.
[laughs] It’s not about shorter pieces. Look, I think there’s a lot of money in ringtones! You know, Touch did a compilation of ringtones, Touch Ringtones, and Oren Ambarchi named the one he did after me. So I have a ringtone named after me.
But yeah, I have an idea, and I’ll be excited to let people know about it. And otherwise, I’d like to do a little bit more radio. I haven’t done any radio for a long time. I still work in radio in some respect. But I’m just going to reset my time and presence in other areas where it needs to be, and take it from there. I don’t want to sound like I’ve neglected my family, but it does make a difference—when you’re committed to a project like this, you might check your emails at night a little bit more, all those kinds of things. I just want to be a little more around and present.
And then there’s First Impressions. I really have to work out what I’m doing with it. I don’t want to charge for it, but I feel like, where is it at? I have to find the stuff I want to listen to and review. I had this idea that First Impressions was, like, I’ll just write something quickly on the commute, 15 minutes. And because you care so much, you go a bit deeper, you take more time with your phrasing, and getting it right on behalf of the artist. But I read yours, and I think, where did you find this? I’m such a ferret, looking around for music, and then I read yours, and I’m like, I haven’t heard of this, haven’t heard of this, haven’t heard of this…
That’s good, because sometimes I feel like my selections are so obvious.
You know, you and I are in real privileged positions, because there are a lot of people who just have not heard of this music. And we might sit down over a beer and know what NUG’s Bong Boat is, or something like that. But many people don’t know it, and they really wait for us to bring it to them. I think that’s a really valuable thing. I’ve always believed in that, and radio, and all kinds of stuff. People rely on other people, and I think it’s a really nice thing to do.
I aspire to be a cover artist for a label like this. I always appreciate when a label has either a strong self-directed art/design sense or partners well to create a discography that feels like a family. Like Mike Cina for Ghostly or Saville for Factory.
This is an interview with Andrew right?