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Founded in 1998, Kracfive has become (vacation) home to great musicians such as Kettel, Proswell, Colongib, Octopus Inc, and wwcarpen, and runs iron chef of music, a music-making battle with extreme deadlines in which many of the same artists participate. It is an international music collective that also houses various collaboration projects such as the quartet Original Instrument - composed only of human vocals - and duos like colongib & octopus inc and Proswell & wwcarpen. Another collaborative project based on machinery sounds features artists such as Brothomstates, Freeform, and Cex, who went on to or came from places like Warp Records. Kracfive is a strong creative force in electronic music mainly run by two of its founders, Christopher Graves and Noah Sasso.

It came out of swapping tapes of homemade music which was similar to the electronic music put out by Skam, merck, and Sonig, with a playful experimental streak. Its artists forge interesting beats and nice tunes using electronic sound design and a fine ear for field and music sampling, picking apart bits of sound to create new instruments and melodies with a “peculiar technical prowess”. Exploring new sonic lands and sometimes coming across in the vein of the best soundtracks from 1980s videogames, it remains accessible to open ears. The label is somewhat mysterious and have been humbly lurking, embracing quality over quantity, not favoring much in the way of advertisements, self-promotion or explanation. Its imaginative sensibilities and idealism have created a bit of a cult following and it has been called ‘dadaist’ in reviews. It has been described as ‘unique for having a mind-foldingly specific sound; this sound, however, is indescribable…’ while its artists are big fans of and respect the non-electronic greats.

In 2003, it began running Iron Chef of Music, a battle like the Japanese Iron Chef television show, except instead of improvising food sample-based music is improvised. All of the contestants get the same short sound clip, often of interesting origin, as the sole special ingredient to create the best song under extreme deadlines (each battle lasts 1 or 2 hours). It differs from a laptop battle or a hip-hop producer battle in that there is no convenient sound pack and there are no rules about tools or genres. The battles, which happen in local venues and over the internet, are approaching 100 in number and have attracted a number of great musicians to compete.

Kracfive artists both musical and visual have played / displayed / appeared in magazines and books around the world. Its artists often make the music and visual artwork for CD and vinyl releases, and they have enlisted the amazing Finnish artist fthr from tpolm for several album artworks. They are known to take much care in the packaging - one CD has a different cover photo hand-exposed in the darkroom for each copy, others are hand-assembled with stickers or hand-printed.

Regarding collaboration, Kracfive has said “Collaboration is important! Especially in electronic music, where it’s really easy to sit in front of a computer all alone and just make tracks that are so narrow, with only one point of view … just like real life, the more perspectives you have on a problem, the better! Of course, our music is not a problem.”

Last.fm group for discussion: Kracfive