Farbwechsel reloaded
Published December, 2024
by Easterndaze
An overview of the Farbwechsel label, looking back at its story so far and mapping out what’s coming up next.
Farbwechsel was founded in 2012, injecting a new burst of colour to the Hungarian electronic music scene with their signature blend of ominous downtempo, the crackle of sizzling cassette tapes, gritty ambient textures, and introspective house releases. They introduced a sound that was largely absent from the Hungarian underground, delivering it with a cohesive image, steadfast dedication, and a strong sense of community.
The label went on a brief hiatus around 2020, publishing releases only sporadically since then. However, their activity has noticeably increased since September 2023, with the team referring to 2024 as their official comeback year. To learn what’s new with Farbwechsel, we sat down with four key members of the label’s management: Martin Mikolai (S Olbricht), Lajos Nádházi (AIWA), Erik Bánhalmi (SVR101), and Tamás Boros aka Borisz (kidwar).
The discussion, which took place at Lahmacun Radio’s studio on September 17th, was also joined by Péter Bokor and Gábor Nemerov from MMN Mag. The full broadcast (in Hungarian) is available in Lahmacun Radio’s archives.
Recalling the earlier, more active years, Martin noted that several press outlets often labeled them as ‘post-communist’ and ‘melancholic.’ He’d always been at odds with these descriptions, feeling that “post-communist” was a kind of exotic classification that Western journalists enjoyed pinning on them, and noting that it was never a goal of Farbwechsel to release melancholic music. He brought up the SILF releases and AIWA’s music as examples to support this claim, which he considers to be more lighthearted. Erik, on the other hand, said he did feel there was a kind of bittersweetness to SILF. Ultimately, it’s up to each listener to decide whether the loose, summery sound of SILF showcases the label’s diversity or represents the exception that proves the rule.
In the early days of Farbwechsel, the label would often state that they wanted to place Budapest on the cultural map of Europe. This decade-old manifesto became somewhat more nuanced by 2024: Martin believes there are now far more indie labels in the country working with electronic music than when Farbwechsel started, so this cultural mission can be carried forward by others. And when we asked him “what’s Farbwechsel now?”, he simply said “old boys making music”.
(The degree of irony or modesty in Martin’s description is hard to say, but it is of the unanimous view of the MMN editorial staff that it must be more than zero, and there is also some suspicion of it being a strong trivialisation.)
Farbwechsel has already put out 4 new releases this year, with several others in the pipeline, and a new artist appearing on the scene (and on the label team): Borisz, who releases music under the name kidwar. He says that becoming friends with Martin over the last couple of years quickly led to the idea of them making music together, and then to actually making it happen, too. Martin was already a member of the two-piece industrial-drone formation DVX NVX with Géza Kulcsár, which they expanded into a trio when Borisz joined.
It’s important to point out that the label – and this says a lot about its importance in 2010 – was able to serve as a pretty serious launchpad for a number of artists they worked with. The label’s vision at the time was fulfilled by making several Farbwechsel artists like Route 8, S Olbricht and Imre Kiss known to Western listeners, labels and the press, and who went on to release several albums under the umbrella of London’s Lobster Theremin (sadly more of a cuss word today). Additionally, several of Farbwechsel’s musicians released music at other European labels in the mid-2010s (e.g. S Olbricht on Opal Tapes and UIQ; AIWA on Seagrave; Alpár on Jj funhouse, 12z on Other People, etc.) and they developed a strong Japanese fanbase, culminating in S Olbricht and Imre Kiss‘s Japan tour in 2018.
On top of the above, one more key and significant foreign (but also Hungary-related) acknowledgement for Farbwechsel was that only Farbwechsel-related artists were invited to the first Boiler Room in Budapest. It took place in January 2017 with Route 8, Imre Kiss and S Olbricht, and the UK’s Snow Bone and Jimmy Asquith.
So, what brought Farbwechsel back from the dead? With just a little exaggeration, it was all thanks to Borisz. According to Borisz, every time he met up with Martin, he would “go on about his stupid ideas and show off all of this stuff”, which re-awakened the foundational notion of the label in Martin, which was that if there were so many ideas, musical concepts and unreleased material out there, then something should be done with them. Their performance at Inota Festival in 2023 with the aforementioned DVX NVX was also a defining experience, serving as an extra boost for Farbwechsel’s re-launch.
Perhaps the most important shift in this new era of Farbwechsel is that they’re currently only planning on producing 2-3 track releases (as can be seen in this year’s catalogue), available exclusively in digital format. The upcoming releases will feature some familiar names like CT Kidobó, S Olbricht and kidwar, but also some new faces for the listening public such as Kiji Suedo from Japan.
The hour-long radio discussion ended with a question about the future of the label as well: will the planned publications and the corresponding producers continue to represent a narrow layer of the scene, thus Farbwechsel intends to remain a more closed system, or is there a plan to reach out towards new producers, younger generations? The answer was ambiguous: on the one hand, there is a plan to keep a narrower group of producers, but on the other, Farbwechsel does also occasionally get confronted with demo material that would be a shame not to release. The 2015 album of Christian Koupa was one such example, but the aforementioned Kiji Suedo material, which will hopefully be available soon, will surely be another. That being said, their verdict is that they’ll see – but regardless, they quickly add: no one should send them any demos.
Originally written by @voremen for MMN Mag.
Translated from Hungarian by Gabriella Gal.
All photos by Gábor Nemerov.
This article is brought to you as part of the EM GUIDE project – an initiative dedicated to empowering independent music magazines and strengthen the underground music scene in Europe. Read more about the project at emgui.de.
Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Education and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA). Neither the European Union nor EACEA can be held responsible for them.