Enrico Bettinello:  How did you start the Porter Records adventure?

Luke Mosling:  Back in 2005 a friend of mine came across a LP called “Natural Food”; he called me up and said that the album was so good that someone had to re-release it.  I jokingly said I would re-release it.  My friend proceeded to track down the man who originally released the album, Mait Edey (who ran the Seeds label in the early 70’s), and a year or two later the CD came out along with Birigwa and Heikki Sarmanto’s “Moonflower”. 

EB:  How do you choose the records to be reissued and to be produced? 

LM:  When I first started Porter Records, I went through my record collection and pulled out a small pile of records that I really enjoyed that hadn’t been re-issued.  In that pile were Ted Daniel “Tapestry”, Joe Chambers “New World” and Byard Lancaster’s “Live at Macalester College” which were the start of the re-releases for Porter.  Most of the jazz musicians on Porter know each other, so when you make contact and have the trust of one musician, it makes it a lot easier to make contacts with other musicians.  One of the first musicians I contacted was Byard Lancaster who has been very helpfully with the promotion of Porter Records.  Byard is old friends with Khan Jamal and Odean Pope, so that is how I got in touch with them.  Khan Jamal played on Ted Daniel’s “Tapestry” recording so that is how I got to meet Ted.  Ted and I are also working on releasing an old recording from 1969 with his first band Brute Force. 

EB:  Let's talk about some records in the catalogue: where did you discover Birigwa and Natural Food? 

LM:  Both Natural Food and Birigwa came through Mait Edey and his Seeds label.  Mait had been out of the music business for a very long time and was actually surprised to see that someone was interested in the music he had put out 35 years ago. 

EB:  Byard Lancaster & Odean Pope, an underrated couple of saxophone players, aren’t they? 

LM:  Unfortunately they are underrated but at least they are still acknowledged as players in the field of jazz.  It’s pretty hard to make it in the jazz world, especially today, since the jazz world is so small.  If you were to randomly stop some one on the street and ask them to name as many jazz musicians as they could, most people could probably only name three or four, if even that many. 

EB:  I’ am very interested in knowing something more about Heikki Sarmanto: how did you get into his music? 

LM:  I meet Heikki through Craig Herndon and Lance Gunderson who played on the Natural Food record.  Craig and Lance both played with Heikki in Finland in the early 70s.  One day Heikki, who lives in Helsinki, gave me a call and we started talking about music.  Turned out Heikki’s mother in-law lives about 20 minutes from my house (in Orlando, Florida) and he was going to be visiting her in a couple of months.  When he did come and visit he brought a bag full of his recordings with him and we spent the afternoon listing to them.  That is where I first heard the “Moonflower” recording.  I hadn’t heard Heikki’s 1970s EMI records but I knew just based on the LP covers I saw that I wanted to re-issue them.  When I finally did hear those EMI records, I was completely blown away.  At the time I had been listing to a lot of American Free and Spiritual jazz, as well as jazz from the UK and Germany.  1970s Finland was all new to me and still is… that’s what makes it exciting.  I’m now working to re-issue other Finish works by Eero Koivistoinen and Vesa-Matti Loiri.   

EB:  Your reissues cover an often misunderstood period of jazz, the 70's, with his mixing of funk, free improvisation, local details: what attracts you in that music and which artistic issue of that time do you think are still topical? 

LM:  At the same time I started getting into jazz I also started listing to a lot of new and old electronic music, so to my ears, jazz from the 70’s didn’t sound strange with it’s incorporation of electronics.  In hindsight it’s a little ridiculous when you read some of those old articles from the jazz purists who were ready to hang all the free jazz players in the 60’s and then the fusion musicians in the 70’s.  Since the start of the 1900’s, when has music ever stood still?  In today’s music, like in hip hop and even pop music, I hear a lot more 70’s jazz than earlier traditional jazz. 

EB:  Let us know something more about your "Italian affair": you reissued some great Valerio Cosi's music and in the coming soon releases we find names as Becuzzi/Orsi and Giannico… 

LM:  Valerio Cosi was the first Italian musician to contact me.  He sent me about 5 of his CD-Rs and I was really impressed by his work.  While his primary style is jazz, you can hear all kinds of other interesting genres creeping into his music.  One of Valerio’s tracks will have elements of psychedelic music and the next will have Eastern sounds.  Valerio put me in contact with Zenlo and Fabio Orsi.  With Zenlo I found some great un-issued music from the past, which was one of my reasons for starting the label in the first place.  Zenlo takes influences of progressive rock, free jazz and krautrock and mixes them in some kind of strange cosmic blender.  Francesco Giannico is another great young Italian musician who creates these amazing soundscapes from electronics, acoustic instruments and field recordings. 

EB:  The avant jazz and experimental music [noise, electronics, whatthehell] audiences is growing in attention, but what about bringing this music to a wider audience? 

LM:  The internet has made it a lot easier for people to be exposed to avant jazz and experimental music.  I remember it was about 15 years ago when I started to get into Sun Ra and thankfully at that time Evidence had begun to re-issue his material.  Outside of the CDs and the few pages of info they had on Sun Ra, it was pretty hard to find out more about him.  Now you just type “Sun Ra” into google and you can find out everything you ever wanted to know about him. 

When it comes right down to it, avant jazz and experimental music is a pretty hard pill for most people to swallow and that is why I don’t try and push the music where it’s not going to be very well received. One time while getting my teeth cleaned, some how John Coltrane’s “Ascension” got put on the speaker system.  While I thought it was great, the lady cleaning my teeth was clearly distressed by it and you really don’t want someone in distress cleaning your teeth. 

EB:  Running a label in the downloading-era: some reflections upon this I don’t download music myself but I certainly make it available for those who do prefer that format. 

LM:  I’ve read a lot of articles and books that fight against the download era but to me it’s a little pointless to fight since people are going to do what they like to do when it comes to buying music.  I’m just happy when people actually buy the music, regardless of the format it is in. 

EB:  What are you actually listening to? Which artists you would love to produce in the future? 

LM:  As far as what jazz I’m listening to… right now I’m listing to the John Carter & Bobby Bradford Quartet “Flight For Four” that came out on Flying Dutchman.  Most of the Jazz I listen to is from the 60’s and 70’s, Andrew Hill, Horace Parlin, Albert Ayler, John Patton, Charles Tyler, Bobby Hutcherson, Sun Ra and Herbie Nicholas to name some favourites.  Of course there is a lot of great experimental jazz being made today; you just have to dig for it, especially since the larger labels will have nothing to do with it.  I spend a large portion of my day listing to demos, sometimes a musician will send me five or ten CD-Rs worth of material and I really do try and listen to everything that comes my way. 

As far as which artists I would like to work with in the future, for me it’s a pretty open door.  I don’t care how old some one is, what they look like or where they are from.  For me good music is good music.