The 2016 round-up

It's the end of another year, a great one indeed.

2016 has been dedicated to celebrations at Boring Machines, now in its tenth year. I released a lot of music during this twelve months, with many regular catalogue numbers and four special releases in only ten numbered copieson vinyl. This special records have been an intentional challenge to my supporters, they had no info on who the artist was, no titles, no graphic design, no digital files available. Only music on black vinyl and zero hype. It was a pretty arrogant move but as I said, after ten years I feel people should trust my tastes. I would like to thank all the artists who donated their music, losing a potential album to be marketed under their name, their support is much appreciated.
You know who you are.

For the tenth year I threw some parties, which I named Ongapalooza with no fear of self-celebration. Ongapalooza are festivals with a full Boring Machines line up. We held the celebrations at Dal Verme in Rome, as part of the fourth chapter of the festival Thalassa. Then the troops moved to Musica nelle Valli, another long running festival in a beautiful place in the middle of nowhere. One week later I was in Berlin at West Germany, with the precious help of
Alice/Occulto who took care of making it special. After the summer break, two more Ongapalooza happened. The first in Milan at Santeria and Santeria Paladini/VOLUME was very special and I am grateful to their staff for the extremely professional services and the genuine love they showed for my bizarre creature. The last party has been in Turin at Magazzino sul Po. The venue we were at was completely flooded by the Po river less than three weeks before, with huge damages, and I was scared we had to cancel the festival. They rebuilt everything in ten days and gave us one of the best and warmest welcome ever for another very special night. I prepose a toast to their strength, they're real heroes. With Ongapalooza I had the chance to meet a lot of people, attend a lot of great concerts and I would like to say heartily thank you to all the folks who helped setting up the shows, the musicians who played, the people who came to the festival, who bought records at the merch, who stopped for a chat.

Ten years is not much, but enough to make some balances. While on the artistic side I'm more than happy of all the things I released, I had to come to terms with something I always avoided or tried not to think about it. For ten years Boring Machines has been economically not sustainable, which is a nice technical way to define a total economic disaster. Imagine for a moment to have spent enough money to buy a quite fancy house in a quite fancy city, then you wake up one morning and you own nothing, real nothing. That's pretty much what happened until now.
Despite a number of loyal supporters and a general appreciation from critics and reviewers, records in general don't sell, no matter how much effort I put on it. Sure, I had some "best sellers" but it's ridiculous numbers even for the niche Boring Machines is in. Most of the non best sellers are almost no-sellers. I made all the choices, I took all the decisions, so I won't complain about the reasons why this happens.
But an adult should be able to rationalise and understand when it's too much. An adult should know when it's time to call it a day.

These are the first new releases for 2017 (in alphabetical order)
Adamennon - Le Nove Ombre del Caos
Adriano Zanni - Falling Apart
Barnacles - One Single Sound
Cristian Naldi - Rurale
Divus - Divus
Paul Beauchamp - Grey Mornings
WK569 - Omaggio a Marino Zuccheri

I wish everybody a Happy New Year, with your friends and your favourite music.
Onga / Boring Machines