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De Stijl began in 1995? 1996? I swiped the logo via xerox from a Walker Art Center flyer during a Hanne Darboven show. I was originally taken by the font of a Berlin magazine from the early 1900s called Der Sturm, but at the final moment of appropriation the De Stijl logo caught my eye so I grabbed. I didn’t know much about Mondrian and wasn’t all that drawn to plasticity but later a Dutch woman told me it meant “style” and I said, “oh ! apropos, cuz I got miles and miles of that shit …”

I was inspired by many, many labels, but I was definitely looking to do my own thing. I loved Drag City. They were probably the label I admired most of all, and was just blown away by their early releases and invitational gigs. Other labels that I loved were Actuel / BYG, Majora, ESP Disk, Folkways, Siltbreeze, Takoma, Twisted Village, Impulse, Xpressway, PSF, as well as labels like Flying Nun, 53rd and 3rd, Sarah and Slumberland. I also just adore bootlegs and the culture in which they are made. I was really drawn to the process of xeroxing and pasting. I’ve taken all kinds of shit for adopting those methods via De Stijl. I’ll take the Patti Smith “Hard Nipples” (ZAP 7882) vibe over a $50 jacket every day. But more than any other label, it was Fusetron and Giardia, who were both good friends of mine and that era of my life was pretty inspiring as we were all sorta working and learning about the same and similar things. Funds were not exactly liquid during that era but as they became so I began collecting labels like Gate 5, America, Groovy, Piano, Shandar, Futura, Center of the World, Vanity, Saturn / Thoth, Jihad, Topic, Pink Islands, Green Brains, whatever. Hundreds more …

De Stijl’s only aesthetic unifier is that De Stijl is simply an expression of my aesthetic. You’ll only get what I like.