Interview takes quite a dark turn when going in detail to health problems. Or lets say, if it goes down to man actually dying and brought back to life, maybe "health problem" is understatement here.
I do not know when I first heard about Cloister, but it was already years. It was always praise, but like Oskar mentions label keeps kind of low key presence. I often just lumped it among those US labels that does good stuff, but do not seem to be available for reason or another. Like Finders or Breathing Problem or such US labels active same time. Which is untrue of course. Several releases I got other formats made by other labels and big part of the artists I have something on collection, just very very little of actual Cloister releases. Very brief contact with him happened just before the above mentioned incident and planned trade never happened. Hopefully one day, hah..
This is one element they discuss in podcast. LaBonte being passionate collector as well. You can always hear certain tone of excitement, when there is actual noise / industrial collector talking. There are people who have cumulated stuff, but there is difference for guys who also do not follow particular trends. You know now what types of releases would be neat to collect, but then going into talking about urge to keep carrying stuff like Apoptose despite it has no real demand at USA. And praising African Imperial Wizard and so on. Or confessing the kind of less admirable, yet obsessive habit of collecting multiple versions. Was it up to 7 versions of specific Trepaneringsritualen title.. That element is very good in running label, when not only being excited of stuff you put out in deeper level and perhaps also being excited about stuff that other labels / artists are doing. They do touch the topic of some labels perhaps being more interested in signing easy and sellable artists, and just selling items. I don't know if there really is that many labels who would be most of all in it for money (as choice of genre would seem odd for that reason), but there certainly may be variation of degree label is part of overall passion to industrial/noise culture or perhaps something else.
Also his style of arranging shows is neat.