diy label of the month: bsdj (bedroom skramz / diy jamz)

Not too long ago, I was looking for screamo-adjacent projects to check out and found she died in pallet town!!!'s Hiiragi, released on the diy label bsdj. I decided to check out more from the label and discovered that every release was extremely my shit. Now, I check out just about every new release of theirs.

bsdj is run by Jordan, who also makes music as the solo bedroom skramz project against realism. Every physical release is hand-made by them - I currently own two CDs from the label, and you can tell that a lot of care was put into them (and I even got a Pokémon card with my purchase :)! )

The artists on the roster can be loosely defined as emo/screamo, but that barely scratches the surface. Just about everyone featured is toying with the listener’s expectations of “genre” (bsdj’s bandcamp page even cheekily describes itself as a “genre-confused label”).  she died in pallet town!!! makes “avant-garde catharsis”; Riot in School’s //Punk Rock Blasphemy（亵渎朋克摇滚\)  is a chameleon of an album with an insane amount of style switchups; The Cime Interdisciplinary Music Ensemble is an uncompromising fusion of Brave Little Abacus style emo, latin jazz, avant-folk, and more...

And that’s the real beauty of the bsdj catalog - its curation is more “vibes” based, so it hosts a ton of artists who might have trouble finding a home on a more traditional label. “Genres are lame,” Jordan tells me via email. “I don't have any hard rules on genres, styles, etc., and i choose music to release almost solely on the people involved.”

The one thing that is a requirement for musicians is that their position on human rights must align with the label's. Their bandcamp clearly states: “human rights first. spread love fight hate." And that’s another reason why it’s such a rewarding catalog to browse through. Not only will you discover a unique artist that The Algorithm could never recommend you, you know you won’t end up accidentally jamming to some right wing chud in the process. bsdj also frequently hosts charity compilations for the Palestinian Children's Relief Fund, LGBTQ youth, California food banks, and more. I highly recommend grabbing a few - they’re a great way to sample the label’s unique roster, and you can support great causes while you're at it.

Jordan was nice enough to chat with me and answer a few of my questions about the label. But before we get into the full interview, here's a small sampling of recent releases that he recommends you check out.

recuerdo acariciar con miedo last alas de un ave herida (fka basuraastillada) - self titled 

“a brilliant emo, screamo, record from an incredible band from Colombia.”

CARE - THIS IS JUST SURVIVAL 

“a really cool chaotic screamo EP from New York.”

when you found me. - my blood was on your hands – 

a “kinda lo-fi screamo/metalcore type album.”

various artists - despite everything it's still you, vol ii 

“a compilation album of 35 tracks raising money for The Trevor Project, which is a really cool US charity which is fighting against suicide amongst LGBTQ youth.”

Soccer. - Internet

"The newest album by legendary Japanese screamo band Soccer. This album is about what the modern internet has brought us, and about the life of you and me."

What pushed you to create bsdj? I know you have your own skramz project - did you feel there weren’t spaces that fit your project / similar projects, so you made your own?

in 2021 or 2022, i was working on music as against realism, and made a lot of friends from around the world (mostly the US then), mostly on instagram. Most of the people were solo artists, and i was talking to them about splits and collabs and things, and thought it would be cool to have a space where we could talk about stuff more easily than in one-on-one DMs. Day ones in there were mil ataris por segundo, My Hair is a Rat's Nest, and weekend at bernies ii and so many more.

So i started a discord, and called it bedroom skramz / diy jamz, as a joke. a lot more people than i thought came into the discord, and it was kind of a right-time-right-place lucky accident.

we decided to do a compilation for charity; raising money for refugees from the Ukraine invasion around when that started. Hunkofplastic Records came onboard and we collabed on that compilation, with them releasing it. the discord wasn't a label by any means at that stage. 

people really wanted physicals made for the compilations, so for the second one i asked godfuck and partymouse to make some stuff for it and they were able to help and made some awesome stuff. for the next compilation, a few labels wanted to help but just weren't able to... so i ended up going to my local second hand store and buying an old tape deck and making some tapes for it myself... and then it all turned into bsdj the label from there.... since bedroom skramz/diy jamz was a meme name i thought id just cut it to bsdj and let people make their own name up from the initials.

(bsdj was always just for helping the community and getting stuff that people wanted made. it was never to release my own stuff as against realism, and i had a rule not to release any of my own stuff on there;; although earlier this year i did because i wanted to try some weird format thing and couldn't find anyone to let me make stuff with their music lol.)

now there are so many labels i doubt I'd make bsdj into a label if i was doing it again. it felt kind of like a necessary or helpful thing to do at the time.

Something I really appreciate about the label is the variety of artists featured. No release really slots into one easily definable box, because even the straight up screamo you feature tends to be a little more experimental. What would you say is the sound or the vibe that you want for the label?

Yeah, that's cool it has that vibe. it's not intentional, so I'm not sure how it looks from the outside. It's a bit of a complicated answer…

i hate traditional record labels. where non-creative people take ownership of a creator's work in order to market and sell it to people. where labels mass-order and then just sell stuff someone else made... where labels just do stuff the artists could do themselves and then they take profits from that. i just always hated that. no fan wants ME, or the LABEL when they buy music;;; they want a connection to the artist. So why are labels taking these huge cuts for doing essentially nothing? Labels would be nothing without the artist. so i think it's crucial to just facilitate an artist in releasing stuff they think their fans will like, and have very little involvement in saying WHAT should be released.

so the way i run the label is to not interfere with the creative stuff, or to judge it even, as good or bad; because im not an authority on that. the creative person is. and the fans are. and that's it. I of course like the music i release, but i think what's more important is to try and help artists rather than trying to judge the artist's music.

a lot of labels just work with artists in certain genres, or work with artists who are popular, or work with artists they personally like the sound of. which is fine, of course. I'm not trying to say that's bad. but personally i tend to work with people who i think should have a platform, or who are kinda on the same wavelength as me. 

one big reason for that is that I want to work with people and make relationships with people to work together for a long time, and to grow together. I really dislike how transactional current society is; so i wanted to make a space where the label and artists would make a super cool space and more people would join and we'd all grow together. sadly, many people don't really see it like that, and I'm not saying i've managed to pull that off, but that's how i try to run the label, or what my vision for the label was, and that's why there is such a diverse mix of artists.

That's such a good way to look at it. Sometimes I'm a little skeptical of more "traditional" labels because I've heard of soooo many ripping people off like crazy - getting them to do free promo or not paying out on sales. Which of course can still happen with the super DIY stuff too, but it seems more common when the labels get a little bigger.

Yes indeed. Honestly it's really hard running a label, and a lot of people make honest mistakes, but there are some not-so-honest mistakes, and it can be hard to know the difference for us outside the story. For me, it's really just about transparency, and accountability. I make a lot of mistakes! But I try to be as transparent as possible about the mistakes i make and take responsibility for them. that's as much as any person can do, but i think it's what all people should do. When people make mistakes, but double down, or pretend like it wasn't their fault, I think is where all the issues are.

How do you typically link up with the musicians on bsdj? You feature artists from China to Germany to the U.S. - is it a whole lot of online networking?

Yeah, it's just online. I don't exist irl. in the old days, i mostly asked artists if i could release stuff through DMs, but these days generally people will approach me thru DMs. i see how the schedule is and make sure we're kinda on the same page about human rights and stuff. 

I think music is a universal language, so i don't care where people are from. its super cool how international bsdj is. i hope the world will be like that eventually. no languages. everyone just screaming at each other... uhh.. i mean everyone being nice and cool despite not living near each other. People are all way more similar than we are different. We all deserve love and respect. and music is such a clear example and expression of that.

Your Bandcamp page specifically calls out, "human rights first." Do you feel that music has a responsibility to speak up about topics like Palestine / queer rights / fascism / etc?

I'll give a nice Rage Against the Machine quote: "Why stand on a silent platform?" whatever platform we have, i think we have not only the chance to use it to spread a positive, meaningful, supportive message, i think we have a responsibility to do so also. I have been given a platform by supporters, fans, and cool people. I think I have a responsibility to defend the people who gave me this platform. Why would i be quiet when my friends are being mistreated? why would i be quiet when people i don't know are being mistreated? we are all the same, we all deserve better.

i think it's to do with power and responsibility; while my label cannot be said to have a lot of power in any big sense, i have the ability to be heard by more people than a person without a few thousand followers on instagram. I think it's the responsibility of people in any position of power, with any ability to be heard, to take the responsibility seriously and to talk about what's important. Of course there is too much to talk about in this post-capitalist world, but trying to provide information and some sense of community for people who may feel like there is no common sense left in the world is the least i can do.

way too many people want human rights to be something open to debate, but for me it isn't. All people deserve basic human rights. There's a real sickening thing in politics, especially from the right wing, where some politicians try and make it out like human rights is a matter of opinion; but to me, and to every government in their constitutions and international agreements: people CANNOT be discriminated against based on how they are born, and deserve a chance to live a happy life. fascism denies this, war denies this, and so do people who question the validity of LGBTQ rights. I don't want to engage with anybody who doesn't understand that, because people who can't grasp a basic level of understanding of the fact that people unlike themselves exist and deserve rights, will not get along with me, and do not deserve rights they want taken away from others. we all get 'em or none of us do.

I also wanted to ask if bsdj serves as a major creative outlet for you. I know for a few releases you work on the album artwork itself, and you've got some "non-traditional" merch like the carabiners and kandama. Do you find that having the label pushes you to explore new things creatively? 

Yes bsdj is definitely a creative outlet for me. That's the only thing that's really enjoyable about it haha. the main reason that i hand-make everything, and draw on the tapes, and do everything myself is because the creativity of it is very fun for me.

I mentioned previously how it's so easy now for anyone to just order their own tapes and sell them, meaning labels really aren't even necessary anymore. It's cheap and there are a lot of options at duplication.ca, if anyone reading wants to see where most labels get their tapes from. they make the whole thing for you! 

but i just find it boring to just get stuff order made like that. it’s much more fun to make things myself, and it also means the stuff really is unique or closer to being a 1/1 rather than 1/100 or whatever it is, since everything is made individually, even if in a series. That's fun for me, and i hope it brings some level of specialness to the bsdj merch. It pushes me to new things also, because i get bored very easily. After i feel i know how to do something it's not as fun anymore, so i tend to go looking for something new, like the carabiners; i'd not made those before so tried it. recently i have been trying free-hand embroidery. I haven’t sold anything from that yet, but it's in the works-——. 

And of course my tapes and CDs will keep being made, if people want them.

Check out bsdj's store here, their bandcamp here, and their Linktree here so you can follow them on your preferred platform.