By Brian Parker

“Somewhere along the line music became ‘content’… It’s my full intention to bring it back to music again! I believe in the power of song.”

So proclaims multi-instrumentalist and record producer Dave Sitek, whose new Federal Prism has been up and running since October of last year, releasing singles and albums from the likes of TV On the Radio, CSS, Scarlett Johanson, Oh Land, Kelis, and more.

Now with SoundCloud as an outlet and platform, Sitek plans on uploading the stems of Federal Prism’s upcoming releases ahead of the actual release dates, giving producers the opportunity to remix the songs and a chance to be featured on the label’s future projects. This method of releasing music brings musicianship, loyalty, and creativity in general to the forefront of an industry that is preoccupied with feeding a content-hungry market.

Sitek, along with business-mate Jeff Bowers, want to give listeners and artists the opportunity to interact with the dissected records before they can hear the actual productions. In a way, the fan becomes the temporary executive producer. Of course with a little (and very little) work, anyone could throw all of the stems into software and bounce them over to an mp3 rendering of the song, spoiling it for everyone. But it’s about interaction more than consumption. Artists like Usher and Bon Iver have released stems to their own singles and albums in the past for open remix contests (you can hear Sitek’s dubbed-out version of Usher’s Climax here), which stirs musicians’ excitement about music they may have never heard. With Federal Prism, Sitek is exploring this sort of accessibility and taking advantage of an opportunity to place new music directly in the hands of anxious arbiters and influencers of taste.

Federal Prism isn’t exactly a new model of a record label, rather the label shows an openness to an ever-morphing landscape of music and consumption. This concept taps into the potential of a record’s infinite iterations and variations. It is not to be overlooked that Sitek has a truckload of solid productions under his belt, from his own bands TV On The Radio and Maximum Balloon to the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Foals, and Telepathe – it’s unlikely that mediocrity will slip through his quality control. And for music fans, there are few greater joys than hearing the unaccompanied vocal takes, guitar solos, or drum tracks from their favorite artists.

Federal Prism may seem a bit backwards to industry traditionalists, but in a world where music lovers go to great lengths to find new music before the masses, the sum of a record’s stems may be greater than the whole of the assembled recording.

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