Psychedelic Knowledge: In conversation with Multi Culti

Here Von Party talks to us about their current release with Margate band United Freedom Collective, what he’s doing on the spring solstice, Jon Hassell, folklorica and the busiest year they’ve ever had.

Where are you this morning and how are you spending the rest of your day?

In snowy Montreal, drinking coffee, chilling with my cats. I’ll be heading over to my studio / venue to work, go through music, and play some table tennis this evening. 

What can you see from your window at this moment. 

Cars properly covered in snow. 

Meditation, Dancing, healing, tripping. Are you a hippy at heart?

I’ve always felt like I’m only part hippie, I have far too developed a sense of shame to be ‘whole hog’, as it were. 

What were the moments leading up to the creation of Multi Culti?

Co-founder Gus (Dreems) and I (Thomas Von Party) were both coming out of a long tenure involved in big and loud music and parties (Bang Gang and Turbo respectively). We were both pretty free-wheeling and had a lot of time on our hands and the good fortune to trip out together in Goa, Sydney and Montreal and had a lot of fun dreaming up a different kind of musical scene and approach. 

Who was involved at the beginning? What coincidence or circumstance brought you together?

Just Gus and I. We met through my brother Tiga’s connection to Dan (Bang Gang / Ksubi). We used to send each other music on iChat before we met in real life, so I suppose it was taste in music and sense of humour that made us want to collaborate. 

What was the vision of the label in the very beginning? 

Music that had culture and colour to it. We shared a love for long ‘journeyman’ DJ sets that spanned tempos and we found ourselves mixing in a lot of, for lack of a better term, ‘world music.’ We were very inspired by the whole ‘fourth world’ thing as articulated by David Toop and probably best exemplified by Jon Hassell. We shared fascination with cultural nexus points, hybrid forms, and felt somewhat unique in wanting to showcase all that but still reserve enough self-awareness and sense of humor to make fun of white dudes wearing shaman feathers.

When you stared Multi Culti, did you have a label model in mind? Was there a label that you thought “I’d like my label to be like this someday”?

I think Comeme was probably the label that most excited me musically, at the time. I also always admired the way Pedro ran Ed Banger in terms of having a strong art direction, tight family dynamic, and a range of artists that also had pop sensibilities, with a bit of fashion thrown in to the mix. 

Would you say the Multi Culti was born out of the dance floor or more out of mindfulness and meditation? 

A bit of both maybe? Still more dance floor I guess. It emerged conceptually in order to express a broad range of influences that contained both those ends of the spectrum. 

Does the vision for Multi Culti remain the same today as it was in the beginning?

Pretty much. Not to overstate our importance but I feel like we were way ahead of the curve in many ways – like we kind of predicted and coined some trends that went on to become embarrassingly big – like ‘desert house’, ‘folklorica’, and to a certain extent the whole ‘ecstatic dance’ scene. I think Gus and I are simply too oddball and irreverent to stick too neatly with any of those genres long enough to get successful at it. 

How many releases did you have ready to go when Multi Culti launched?

We had that Crowdpleaser – Nenekri record, Gus’ debut Dreems record, and that MKRNI EP with the dope DJs Pareja & Diegors remixes. 

When did Multi Culti hit its stride as a label? 

I feel like it only took about two years for things to really crystallize and become sort of trendy. By 2015 we’d found Nicola Cruz and Peter Power and suddenly we were kind of a centre point for cross-pollination between the new South American scene and Europe for a start. 

Multi Culti has paid intense attention to the artwork. The aesthetic is jaw dropping.

Thanks! I want to give Gus and I credit in that we have always been directly involved in that side of things. We always work closely with our designers and make the artwork ourselves. Gus is a super talented artist and I have a good eye for patterns and  basically visual sampling. Our most long-standing and I suppose recognized collaboration was with this guy Joel aka Ventral is Golden. He’s an amazing resource that shares our love of the esoteric, very knowledgeable and far out. 

What do you hope to convey through your artwork? 

I think there’s usually a sense of pointing to some kind of psychedelic knowledge, of the possibilities for mind expansion.

Your artwork on Multi Culti seems tied to symbolism, talismans, and mysticism. Is this connected to a particular system of beliefs? 

I wouldn’t say one particular system, it’s definitely ‘multi’. Sometimes we borrow loosely from motifs and disconnect them from their meaning, it can be a bit postmodern in that sense so I can’t pretend there’s any rigid orthodoxy or order at play. 

Do you consider the seasons and solstices in your release planning? 

We do try to be good hippies and align releases, we did this ‘axial tilt’ series of solstice and equinox releases, more than anything to try to give ourselves deadlines and ritualize the passing of time. ‘Biodynamic limited batch artisanal-grade vinyl’ – stick those words together and you can sell your records for an extra euro!

You undoubtedly get sent a lot of unreleased tracks. Have many of those wound up on the label? Do people ‘get’ what you are looking for?

Usually when someone sends a demo confidently exclaiming how well they think it would fit on the label, it ends up being shit. But yeah, I listen to everything, always have. Since the Turbo days, a lot of hits have come my way through unsolicited demos (Gesaffelstein, Proxy, more recently United Freedom Collective for example) so I take pride in really listening to everything. 

Multi Culti has not been influenced by the trends of the music industry. Talk about the place where
your musical vision comes from.

Eat some mushrooms and you’ll find the lines between things blur. Everything is connected, and the music we care to release tends to serve as a reminder of that fact. 

A record label is a romantic thing. But most great indie labels eventually get bought out and then they become the least romantic thing in the world. Do you ever contemplate the distant future where someone offers you more money than you can turn down to add it to their portfolio? 

I know there are these VC funds that buy up catalog for songs that rack up over a million plays per month, but fortunately or unfortunately we’ve never gotten to the level of commercial success where we’ve been especially tempted to sell out. I’m more worried about AI agents suing us over some obscure uncleared samples.

And what about your own personal productions. What do you have going on at the minute? 

We have lots in the pipeline, I’ve got hundreds of demos I someday hope to release. Gus and I are planning to prioritize more original Multi Culti production. It’s gotten very hard for labels to promote themselves so focusing on the brand as an artist seems to be a necessary step to sustain things. It really would be nice if Spotify gave labels landing pages. It’s almost as if they’re trying to kill off labels (they are). 

What do you think has been one of Multi Culti’s most important releases in its lifespan?

Nicola Cruz’ ‘Cantos de Vision’ was a big one, and it has certainly been the most successful EP, but the ‘Moon faze Sun Gaze’ comp was the most important release for us in terms of coming out as a brand. 

Is there an underrated record from the catalog which you have a particular love for that we should check? 

Honestly, there are so many of our records that haven’t done well that I think are brilliant: Ccolo’s ‘Visions’ album, Zongamin’s ‘O!’, Dreems’ first album ‘In Dreems’, to name a few. 

You have recently signed United Freedom Collective. What can you tell us about these guys and why you think they are special?

I really love how they put music and lyrics to some very idealistic, again, psychedelic vibes. It’s not easy to overtly sing about this stuff without being insanely cheesy, but they manage to ride that line and it’s a real testament to their talent. Robbie, who is the lead producer and writer, is an incredible songwriter, like he could really be writing for pop singers. Solid musician too. I predict big things for them, and it’s special for us because they’re really the first act we’ve signed that have jumped right in to live performance (they’re actually in the middle of a sold-out tour as opening act for Maribou State). 

Talk us through the EP a bit. 

It’s Robbie’s first outing as the sole vocalist, in the past they’d done lots of different featured vocalists, so I suppose it’s a bit more personal from him. It showcases a range of influences that I love – you can hear everything from Jungle to Jai Paul to Jamiroquai to Jurassic 5 (to name only the ‘J’ influences) in some sense I suppose it’s very UK in that knack for really suffusing pop culture into a new brew. 

What is Multi Culti planning for 2025? 

Our busiest release schedule ever! Seven full length albums in a range of musical styles, including more ambient stuff along the lines of that ‘Ocean of Beauty’ LP we just put out. Some semi- retrospective releases from some amazing underground artists we really admire. Setting to work on original Multi Culti releases and doing events and residencies at our amazing studio / venue in Montreal. 

How are you spending the spring solstice? 

Chilling with my wife, hopefully. We’ve been living the multi culti dream / nightmare in a transcontinental relationship, so the plan is to be in one place together long enough to relax our nervous systems and hopefully reproduce. 

Who do you think is changing the world for the better right now?

Great question. I wish more people came to mind. It’s hard not to be freaked out by the state of the world and horrified by the oligarchs and douchebag influencers that dominate our feed. I feel like good people doing nice things don’t get a lot of press, but they’re out there, smiling away, helping people, caring, loving. Or I don’t know, Aphex Twin! 

Guess I’m a bit stumped on this one, and reminded of the saying: ‘be the change you want to see in the world.’ No one is going to come along and save us; we have to save ourselves! 

Buy the new release HERE.