

Kikimora
Kikimora is a Canadian cassette label from Toronto founded in 2015 by producer Tony Boggs. »Kikimora is a ghost town, inhabited by me and my friends«, says Boggs about his project, whose roster spreads across the entire world. Boggs himself likes to ironically deal with the media confusions of the world, in his own music; the beginning of Kikimora marked his debut under the name Unfollow, the first tape was called »Zero Likes«. This is a small appeal made up of Soundcloud research and his own archived projects, which is simultaneously ironic and concise. »I think it’s a sort of outsider music, since there is this…blurred, delicate vibe. Perhaps it is just me that can hear it«, explains Boggs thoughtfully, adding that despite the variety of his own projects – Désormais, Joshua Treble, and Letter Letters for example – he has never felt as if he belonged to any scene. »I imagine the catalogue as a kind of big mix tape.« Very personal and by definition, very open.
The common theme of these mix tapes is more coloured by the personal relationships of Boggs to his artists than by stylistic considerations. Between the muffy Techno sounds so to speak, which he has published himself on Kikimora as Unfollow or Désormais, to the clanking synth sounds of the hyper-producer Hardware band German Army, up to the gritting sounds of Beau Wanzers, the music of Bogg’s friends is united above all by the all-round, analogue sounds.
On the one hand it is available as a download, on the other hand on cassette. An ideal decision? Not really. »Finally it is about money and turnaround times«, admits Boggs. For him tapes are inexpensive artifacts, but also small art objects; besides the artwork there is special value placed on the track sequence of each release and is not only mastered differently from the digital version, but partly also adds additional tracks or extended mixes of pieces, in order to make a coherent ensemble from each tape. The artwork is not distinguished by recognisable elements like other similarly stored tape-labels, rather it is individually produced by Boggs’ wife Dessa. In the ghost town of Kikimora everything follows the same ideology.