Exactly 20 years ago on 1st of October 1999, a very young version of myself was researching on names for starting an own website. Purely with the thought of having an own site (or a net label if you may) for my own -by then- rapidly increasing output of music and website production. From a really strange coincidence I landed on the name Miasmah, after finding it on dictionary.com word of the day back then (without the h). The word struck me mostly by the name itself, but the meaning didn’t hurt either. “A vaporous, toxic atmosphere that emanates from something”. I didn’t think too much about it as I was making trip hop, d&b and ambient music in a more uplifting way as of that time. Since miasma.com was taken, I added the h on the end purely to be able to get a .com address. I’ve had conflicted thoughts about this since, but in the end, that h made it so that the name stayed totally unique in the current times of flooded name-searches.
Thinking back at it, It´s such a bizarre thought that something i randomly started when i was 20 years old I’m still connected too, even for a slightly different reason than the beginning. In the years since 1999, Miasmah went through up to 30 different website designs of questionable quality (up to about 2009, when I stopped being interested in changing web sites), released over 60 freely downloadable releases in its early inception as a web label. Then, since 2006, approaching 45 physical releases - which, thinking about it, is actually not that much for 13 years. I can however stand behind every one of them.
The first Miasmah website. October 1999. “Please don´t judge me here. I was 20 years old and it was early stages of Flash web development. I was a bit too eeger. I also realise this is both embarrassing and very very ugly, but I decided to show it anyhow, for historic purposes.” - Erik
I won’t celebrate the 20th anniversary, as I see the 2006 date as the real start of the label. But it feels really really strange for me to think that I´ve been somehow connected to the name for now 20 years. As usual, time overtakes and suddenly you´re in a totally different stage of life. I’m lucky to still be excited about running the label, even for a lot of ups and downs and changes in pretty much everything. I’ve been giving a lot of thought into how to proceed and possibly change. Should one grow or stay? I realise more and more that I´d rather stay small and enjoy working with all the aspects of a release, than to grow big and possibly get overwhelmed. This has its pros and cons of course. I always come back to what really makes me happy, which is to create and release timeless pieces of music and images that exist in a place outside of time and space. To go with the time and against it at the same time.
How long this will continue, I have no idea. But for now, I try to enjoy it as much as I can. Next year sees a new chapter in the history of Miasmah - together with Sonic Pieces. One that I’m very excited about. More on that later.
/Erik K Skodvin