Label of the Month: Iboga Records

Iboga Records are one of the trailblazing vertebrates of progressive psy-trance, which dawned within the crevices of Copenhagen’s squat scene during the mid '90s. Next year, the label will celebrate their 30-year anniversary, which has transformed from a grassroots trance community into a global business housing a label, studio and booking agency. Beatportal sat down with co-founders Michael Abel Larsen and Mikael Dahlgaard to talk about their reflections on sustaining a global record label and going back to their rebellious rave roots.

Iboga’s name derives from a psychoactive plant from Central Africa (Ibogaine Tabernanthe) which was used to rehabilitate heroin and cocaine addicts, yet turned away by the medicine industry likely due to opting for making profit over the ability to cure people. The psychonauts behind the label are Michael Abel Larsen (alias DJ Banel) and Mikael Dahlgaard (alias Emok), who initially started out in the punk, death metal, and acid house scenes of Copenhagen. “I was involved in the punk and death metal scene when I was young, and whilst I could connect with the ethos and the attitude, musically there was something missing. When acid house came around that’s when everything changed for me,” explains Mikael.

Copenhagen’s electronic music scene was small and tight knit, where everybody knew each other and embraced different types of electronic sound. “This is also what defines us as a label - we come from a time where it was a combination of one scene with different kinds of music. It was perfectly allowed and it was normal” remarks Michael, who reflects on the prevalence of no boundaries or rules when it came to the creation and rapture of early electronic music. Much of this inspiration came from the iconic Coma parties where the pair first met, run by Kenneth Bager of Music for Dreams, which attracted a welcoming group of ravers dancing the night away, dressed up in weird and wonderful costumes.

Whilst Coma was a cultural incubator in Copenhagen, Mikael and Michael also foraged for inspiration elsewhere in Europe. Malmö in Sweden was, and to an extent still is, a prime spot for illegal events, which became a consistent convoy path for young ravers. Back then, you would have to take the ferry between Copenhagen and Malmö, as it was before the Øresund Bridge existed. This transplantation of sound exposed an intensification of authoritarian pressure on raves. “Sometimes in the events, you had special police forces arrive with hundreds of them removing people from the raves. The more it happened, the more we wanted to create this room of freedom that the dance floor and the music really create,” Mikael replies.

The pair also connected with autonomes and techno punks in Germany, from the Love Parade to Fusion Festival (Фузион), which was an annual celebration of ‘Holiday Communism’ set at the former military site Müritz Airpark. “I never take DJ bookings on the weekend of Fusion Festival because it’s the most important time of year for me,” mentions Mikael. In 1997, they met the previous owner of Fusion, Marcus Carp, so they invited him to play in the squat, Ungdomshuset, in Copenhagen, right when the label was starting out. “We got a lot of inspiration from Fusion, so that’s had a huge impact on our music and the networks that we have built. We were playing there a few weeks ago - I stayed up for two days and got more inspired than I have on any dance floor in the past years.”

Under their DJ alias’ Banel and Emok, the pair is also closely associated with Boom in Portugal, one of the longest-running independent music festivals. “We go back more than 25 years with the organisers of Boom as friends and people we've been dancing with and partying with for many decades,” explains Michael. “So it's also a kind of a family reunion.” These long-standing relationships have shaped Mikael and Michael’s approach to running an independent music label.

As Iboga has transformed through the decades, iterations of this borderless nature of electronic music the '90s rave scene fostered has returned to the sonic output Mikael and Michael look for when releasing on the label. “It seems like the younger generation these days decided to break down all the barriers and the rules between the styles and just take whatever is there. And I think this is what music is about,” explains Mikael – furthering this idea that “Iboga is more than just a psy-trance label.” Working with younger artists has injected new vitality into Iboga, particularly when both felt the label was struggling during a period where electronic music was meticulously categorised by sound and scene.

This vitality has helped spur the pair on to launch IbogaTech in 2018, their peak time darker techno and house sub-label, described by Michael as one of the biggest challenges to overcome that they’ve succeeded in as a label. This step has also been defined by visiting different corners of the globe, such as the trance community in Brazil, where they have their own micro-communities and local heroes amongst cities of millions of people.

When focusing on what music to release and why to release it, Michael explains that it always comes down to personality. “The personality of the artist has a big impact on who we decide to work with. If we can see there is a lot of passion and dedication, we prefer to work with these people as releasing on the label involves a lot of teamwork.” There is also a big reliance on personal connectivity. The pair have travelled the world going to different events, and building a family resonates with them deeply as people. “That’s a big part of defining the Iboga sound. It was a journey together with our friends who we started releasing music with in the early days.”

Mikael and Michael can recall a pivotal moment in the label’s sonic output, working together with New Zealand producer FREq following an interaction in the middle of the Australian desert at the Sun Eclipse Festival in 2004. He mailed a CD-ROM to their studio with the scrawled writing of ‘FREq’. “I would say 20 minutes after listening to the demo, we called him up and asked if he wanted to do an album with us. It’s the only time in the 29 years we received a demo from someone where we were completely blown away,” explains Mikael. When FREq’s album Strange Attractors came out, everybody wanted to start making music that sounded like him, and set a new sonic palette for progressive psy-trance.

Most of Mikael and Michael’s fondest memories relate to connecting with talented producers. Sometimes this relied on leaning into commercial success. They worked together with Vini Vici in 2012 whose remix of the Highlight Tribe track "Free Tibet" blew up globally and the duo went on to make a track with Armin van Buuren. Tracks like this helped push psy-trance out of its underground bubble and into the spotlight of massive festivals like Tomorrowland and Awakenings. “In the underground, commercial is such a bad word. I think when something is commercial, it means a lot of people identify themselves with it and they like it,” remarks Mikael, highlighting how commercial success has allowed artists to tour more, reach wider audiences, and build sustainable careers.

This also means that major events have tapped into the trans-central experience, commodifying this kind of spiritual connection to music. “You know, people need that space of freedom. But the underground still defines what that space of freedom is.” In this sense, you have festivals like Fusion and Boom establishing their values of freedom in the underground, and the likes of Tomorrowland and Burning Man in the commercial landscape mapping their own interpretation of this. But the underground will continue to produce environments that are indigestible and unreplicable to a wider audience based on the values of freedom they uphold.

Whilst commercialisation helped a certain ecosystem of musicians, solidarity remains in the local grassroots communities. During the financial crash of 2008 and the infected virus of illegal downloading, Mikael and Michael assumed the label was at a bitter end. However, they were supported by friends living in freetown Christiana, a squatted military complex in Copenhagen, who lent 15,000 euros to help the label out of bankruptcy. Finding small revenue streams and thinking ahead is what has helped keep the label afloat since, as they were the first psy-trance label to catch on to Beatport’s digital download service, something that none of their roster believed would work in the beginning. Iboga has gone on to be the biggest psy-trance back catalogue available on Beatport.

The pandemic gave Mikael and Michael a rare chance to step back from the day-to-day grind of running the label, slow down, and reassess their core values. In doing so, they reconnected with the original spark that led them to start Iboga – channeling the raw energy, spirit, and community they first felt on the dance floors of the mid '90s. “When you make music, stay true to what you like, don’t let your surroundings dictate what’s right or wrong. That’s why personality is foundational to our musical journey,” states Michael.

As they near 30 years in the game, Iboga’s story is still being written – fueled by the same fire that lit up those first squat parties in Copenhagen. Mikael and Michael have built more than a label; they’ve built a global family rooted in freedom, connection, and fearless creativity. After three decades, the spirit’s only grown stronger – and the best is still to come.
 

Listen to the Iboga Records 'Label of the Month' chart below.