Dean Lloyd Robinson, the face behind both the noise project Knifedoutofexistence and label Outsider Art was kind enough to chat with me about running a label post-Brexit and post-pandemic, his influences, and a decade in noise.

Outsider Art is now over a decade old, I’m curious how has the label changed in that time? The Internet is so different from 2012, in terms of how music is distributed, listened to, etc. I was wondering what have been the biggest changes?

When the label first started, I was yet to play my first show with Knifed and the first two tapes were from more hardcore type bands, and whilst it’s not been unheard of for OA to work with bands in more recent times (like Beheading and Unyielding Love), the focus has very much shifted to noise/experimental type material. Streaming would have been the main change in that time, I didn’t have a Bandcamp for the label until I somewhat relaunched it in 2019 and did the first noise batch. The label was mostly a vehicle to release my own material and a few friends occasionally, mostly around tours, for a few years, and it wasn’t until 2019 I think I started to really take it seriously as a more full time, regularly releasing concern.

The price of things and Brexit are the two biggest changes. Everything costs a lot more to produce now, 10 years ago you could sell tapes at profit for what the cost price of tapes is now. Brexit has meant a huge decrease in people ordering from the mainland, due to the various fees they can be charged on their end now, which are seemingly impossible to predict and applied almost at random. I think the huge rise in the cost of sending orders from America to the rest of the world means US customers order less internationally now, though the cost to send things from here to the US is dramatically less than the other way round.

When Outsider Art was created, did you have any intention of cultivating a specific sound or aesthetic, or was it just a way to physically release music that snowballed from there?

Yeah, there wasn’t a ton of thought put in initially beyond wanting to do a label and having a couple of bands in mind to work with. After that batch in 2019 I mentioned earlier is when more concrete ideas about the material I was releasing and the aesthetic were really put into place. There’s a very clear idea of wanting to have a somewhat uniform look to the tapes, knowing it’s an OA release from a distance, coupled with always having hand cut and folded xerox j-cards.

When you get a old tape from a project or band and it comes with a DIY photocopied sleeve always excites me more than a nice clean pro print job does. I have an old No Fucker tape that’s the first two demos and the j-card is the covers from each tape photocopied on the back of each side of a peice of paper and the lyrics sort of arranged weirdly to make it work when you fold it. It’s a bit off centre and all that. I often think about that tape when I’m comparing my releases to other labels and want to remind myself of why I do things the way I do. I want my tapes to look good, but I want you to be able to tell this was done by hand on a photocopier. Sorry, I’m going on about photocopiers again, this happens every time someone asks me questions about what I do.

The first release was the self-titled Neglected cassette, right? How did that come about, I know it’s a Turkish project, was it something spontaneous or planned for a time?

I used to play in a powerviolence band, and we did a big tour of Europe. The members of Neglected organised and played our show in Instanbul. They blew me away. It was that original Neanderthal style sound mixed in with what newer (at the time) bands like Sea Of Shit were doing, and it couldn’t have been more up my street. Their set that night remains one of the best powerviolence sets I’ve ever seen, and it was their first gig. I think I probably said I was thinking of starting a label there and then and asked them if they’d like to do a tape.

Your latest various artist comp, True Listening Is Love In Action, was the labels 100th release – what were the thoughts behind making it and did it take long to put together?

A hundred releases seemed like a milestone worth marking, so I wanted to do a compilation with some of my favourite artists I’d worked with on the label up to that point. I wanted it to be statement of what we’d all achieved in recent years and where we are all heading. I think it was probably about a year and a bit between when I first mentioned the idea to people and it actually seeing the light of day.

My first exposure to your work was in the mid 2010s when I found the split with Carrion Sunflower – who I also knew of from Witch Cult and some of his youtube stuff initially – what was that period of recording like in the early 2010s? Did you have a clear idea for what your sound would be?

When I started out I intended it to be just full on total noise with no structure whatsoever, however I very quickly realised that me doing that didn’t make for very interesting recordings, so I started to try to record the kind of records that would be engaging to me as a listener. Recording back then was very much a learning curve, I was making a lot of it up as I went along, learning how Audacity worked and recording out of a small bass combo with a USB mic. It’s no exaggeration to say, from a technical point of view, didn’t have a single clue what I was doing when I first started out. There were conceptual ideas there, and using it as a vehicle for catharsis was important, but I was definitely learning as I was going along.

What’s your thoughts on the UK noise scene, and is it any different now from when Knifedoutofexistence started?

I think it’s incredibly healthy right now, and only getting stronger. More tours seem to be happening, where as it feels like a few years ago a lot less U.K. artists were regularly touring. In the past month alone you’ve had Fleshlicker, Insatiable Wound and Sword Of Damocles on one tour, and Distraxi, Blackcloudsummoner and Gender Is The Bastard on another, both very strong line ups. It feels a lot easier to book noise shows now, where as before jumping on shows with bands and relying on people who do punk/metal/indie/whatever shows to take pity on you and let you play their gig seemed a lot more commonplace.

There’s some really great people doing really great things, and it only seems to be growing. I’m noticing a lot of newer, younger queer attendees at shows which is obviously a great sign of good things to come, it gives this whole thing a future

Mist And Static is one of my favourite releases of yours, could you tell me a bit about that record and working with Cremation Lily?

Zen of Cremation Lily is a very dear friend of mine, and we go way back to when we were in grind and screamo bands. That record came about as a release to do alongside a tour we had coming up, and also it was ridiculous that we’d never actually done a split or a full collaborative track together. We both did a solo track, and then the collaborative track was born out of the idea to cover Horse Latitudes by The Doors, as we often spoke about how that track is almost an early, acoustic version of power electronics. What resulted is far from a straight cover, but all of the lyrics I do on that are from Horse Latitudes still, hence the title being Mist And Static (Horse Latitudes). Some pretty heavy personal events happened just as it was released, and it has taken on a very different personal meaning for me now. My solo track, Background Noise For Banality, is one of my favourite tracks I’ve ever written, and I put it in my live set more often than not.

Working with Zen is just like second nature. They’ve produced two full lengths and an EP for me now, and what I learnt in the process of doing those records has shaped the project as much as anything. I’m also a live member of Cremation Lily. The two projects are absolutely intrinsically linked now as far as I’m concerned.

More than a lot of other genres, the noise musicians I’ve talked to have wildly different ways of recording music VS playing it live. Is Knifedoutofexistence easy to translate album recordings to live performance and vice versa?

It used to be that I would craft a set, play it for a tour or a couple of shows, and then record it when I got back from tour or after playing it live a couple of times, and then make an album of that when I’d got enough material. So it used to be that what I did live would be what I recorded, so that was a pretty straight forward process. My sets were just one piece back then, and I very rarely would try to perform things again once I’d done them for their initial run.

I started to switch this up for the release show of Inhibitors, which was the first time I made a conscious effort to play multiple recorded tracks live. Then when the pandemic hit I really had to change things up as writing/developing material live wasn’t an option during lockdown. Once I got back to playing shows after lockdown, I had to make a really effort to figure out playing recorded material live, as I’d started to incorporate a lot more elements from varying sound sources that would be impossible to perform live (I was never going to be able to replicate a guitar part that I played once on a borrowed 12 string guitar) so I use a lot of tapes these days, and have also used a digital 8 track live.

Outsider Art has released a lot of records from international musicians – Axebreaker and Tantric Death from the US, Coma Cluster from The Netherlands etc. Is making physical releases with that distance more difficult as a label compared working with UK-based artists, or has the Internet smoothed it out a lot?

It makes very little difference to be honest. It’s the same process of being sent tracks and images via email for releases, just some of those emails have been sent from further away. Also, I’ve seen and played so many shows with Kevin from Coma Cluster in the past year or so that it feels like he could be based here, I’ve definitely got English friends I see less than him.

A lot of noise artists I’ve spoken to are either explicitly informed and driven by politics or try to avoid them consciously. Would you describe Knifedoutofexistence as specifically politically/socially/ideologically driven or is it more driven by personal emotions etc?

Knifedoutofexistence is deeply personal. Everything the project does relates very intimately to aspects of my own life, so that is the driving force. It’s is something I need to do to create some kind of sense of balance and achievement in my life. That said, I do not think that makes the project apolitical, and a political edge is definitely not something I would consciously try to avoid. The personal is political as the saying goes.

Knifed is not a character I put on, and it is an extension of me, and my politics are going to seep into it. I’m a working class person who has struggled with their mental health, and I firmly believe that our current government has deliberately made it harder to access both financial and mental help. They don’t want you to get a penny that might make your life just a tiny bit more comfortable, and if they’re going to let you have anything, it’s going to be completely on their terms, and the slightest slip on your behalf will cost you dearly, but they can mess you around and belittle you until it pushes you towards suicide with zero repercussions. Situations like that create the psychic backdrop to the project. Life is hard, and the right wing have a vested interest in make it harder for people that they deem less worthy. People are cruel, bigoted and careless. The violence of men, both literal and mental, is an absolute plague upon this country, and indeed most others. It creates immeasurable amounts of fear and trauma everyday. As a result of this, I have absolutely no interest in upholding any kind of macho tough guy image or ideas, in my everyday life or through what I present in my work.

There’s a lot of (often quite tiresome) discussion around separating the art from the artist, which often I feel only serves to rob art of the context it was created in. I have no interest in people not viewing my work as part of me. If you object to me personally or politically, I’m very happy for you to not consume my work. I try to not put particular political labels on what I do, but I think to anyone who’s engaged with my work on any real level, it should be obvious where I stand on things.

What are your biggest influences right now? Musical or non-musical.

I’ve been getting back into film hugely recently. I went to see Enys Men by Mark Jenkin when it first came out, and then again a week later, and then again a couple of months after that when it was screened with him doing the score live as part of The Cornish Sound Unit, and that film had a profound effect on me.

It made me start thinking about film in a way I had since I studied film studies at college. I devoured everything I could in relation to that film, interviews, podcast, Jenkin’s other feature and short films, which has lead to somewhat of a fixation on folk horror and 70s British TV in that vein. I’ve been reading books on folk horror and watching TV like Ghost Stories For Christmas and The Owl Service. There’s so much that can spiral out from the initial idea of folk horror, and so much to explore. Watch the Wicker Man once and a few months later, you’re reading Alan Garner, searching out old episodes of A Play For Today and attending a Wassailing. I find the grainy film, the ideas around class, pasts that never were, futures that will never be, relationship to landscapes and ideas of hauntology deeply evocative, so that is a definitely a lens I’ve been seeing things through recently.

My friends continuously inspire me. I’m lucky to be close to some amazing artists and seeing them create and put themselves into their work pushes me to continue doing the same. Seeing Geheimnisknecht play for 9 days in a row recently was incredibly inspiring. They were the first shows he’d ever played with that project, and it just goes to show what you can do when you have a vision and put everything into pursuing it. Pure conviction and determination.

I listen to a hell of a lot of Neil Young these days (Mirrorball is the current record of choice), and it’s been years since I’ve not listened to Oscillating Innards – Nadir Emergence at least a couple of times a week. Merchandise are definitely holding their place as an all time favourite, (Strange Songs) In The Dark is the album of choice from them right now. Also been listening to I Am A Lake Of Burning Orchids – Morning/Hands on repeat a lot.

Finally, what are the plans for Outsider Art and Knifedoutofexistence for the rest of 2024?

The next OA batch is coming on April 22nd and will feature Ecotage, Acts Of Worship and your recent interviewee Distraxi. I’m organising a show in Brighton for Peter J Woods as part of his U.K. tour three days later. A good few other releases are being planned, and hopefully another live event.

There’s a lot coming up for Knifedoutofexistence. In the live realm, I have two shows in the next few days, one with Vacuous, a U.K. death metal band that I love, and another as Knifelicker playing with Knoll. I’m very picky with my death metal, but I really like what I like, and Vacuous nail what I personally love in death metal. Knifelicker is a collaborative project with Mike from Fleshlicker, and we’ve only done it live once before so I’m looking forward to the chance do it again.

In May I’ll be playing the Crude Transmissions fest again in Leiden, this time with Fleshlicker and Viiemeinen, and we’ll be doing a few more Euro shows together in the run up to that. In June I’ll be touring the U.K. with Andrew Nolan. Andrew is an artist who’s produced so much work I absolutely adore and have been inspired by, and it’s a huge honour to be touring with him. In October I’ll be playing F.L.A.W. Fest in Cleveland, which is an event being held in celebration of Roman Leyva’s (Plague Mother, Slit Throats) 40th birthday and is an absolute who’s who of noise. It’s equally humbling and terrifying to have been asked to play it.

In terms of recorded output, I’m just putting the finishing touches to an EP for Turlin, which is a label run by Alastair from Viimeinen. That’s an EP of guitar based material. The only sound sources on it are guitar, cymbals and voice. I wanted to make a record that had at it’s core the feeling when you first get in a practice room as a kid and just make guitar feedback and crash cymbals about. I wanted all the sound sources to be something that would be in a regular practice space, nothing particularly specialised for noise. So there was quite a nostalgic angle about the choice of instrumentation for the the record, and that sense of nostalgia will carry over into visual and lyrical themes. The artwork is going to all be images of the Shell Garden, which was a place I went to as a child in Bournemouth. It was a house and garden that had been completely covered in shells, stones, tiles and pieces of pottery. Alastair and I are both from Dorset, and he still lives there, and we spoke about it when I was visiting him and the theme started to develop in my head. When I read an article about it and read that the son of the creator believed the whole project was a response to the death of his brother, that his father built it to deal to with the grief he felt at losing a son, it all fell into place for me. Lyrically it’s essentially one continuous piece of writing that I wrote in a single night, in the small hours when I couldn’t sleep. It touches on childhood memories of the shell garden and the Dorset countryside, how the shell garden is no longer there, and landmarks of the countryside still are. You can probably see how the folk horror and hauntology I spoke about earlier have been feeding into this too.

I also intend to release a new full length at the start of 2025. Lots of the tour/show only tapes and CD-Rs I’ve been doing of late are almost like sketches for this album, and lots of material and ideas from those will be put into their final form on that album. It’s broadly about everything that has happened in my life since I wrote Mist Clouds The View, but more specifically it’s about grief – which is part of the reason I’ve been working towards it over 2 years. I needed some time to pass to be able to process what I had been thinking and writing, so I could make this album more of a reflection than just a sudden reaction.

There’s almost certainly more I’ve not mentioned here. Long story short, I won’t be slowing down anytime soon and I’m definitely keeping myself busy.

Thanks again to Dean for the interview. You can get both his and others music from Outsider Art here.