HAKATAK International was founded in early 1996 by Paul Robb of the recording act Information Society. Paul left that group in 1993 and concentrated for the next several years on music for film and television. Among other projects Paul scored the international versions of the MTV programs The Real World and Road Rules.

While in Information Society Paul wrote and/or produced seven Billboard Hot 100 hits including the #1 smash "What’s On Your Mind". He has also produced projects for other artists, among them Red Flag, Noel, Kon Kan, the Ramones and India.

In 1991, Paul composed and produced two tracks that were intended for the Information Society album Hack, called "Hack 1" and "A Knife and A Fork". The tracks met with such positive response that it was decided to release them on their own, on the then-fictitious HAKATAK label, under the Think Tank moniker. The tracks went on to become underground smashes both in the U.S. and abroad, most notably in Japan and the U.K. It is no surprise then that when Paul began entertaining the idea of starting a new label devoted to electronic dance music, the HAKATAK name came to mind.

Today HAKATAK is a thriving indie label with national distribution through IODA (Independent Onllne Distribution Alliance). The first release, Think Tank’s Skullbuggery appeared in September 1996 and proceeded to move up club and college charts nationwide, spending four weeks in the Top Ten of CMJ's RPM chart. Mandroid, an EP consisting of Think Tank remixes and rarities, followed soon after. The HAKATAK roster also includes Brother Sun Sister Moon, a trip hop project featuring the incredible Barbara Cohen (whom the Saint Paul Pioneer Press described as "dark, melodramatic, intense, desire filled and dangerous") on vocals; Dissonance, a pop-industrial group from Texas; and Information Society.

HAKATAK’s mission is to explore all avenues of electronic music from the harsh noises of industrial to the lulling funkiness of trip hop and the grinding beats of techno and house. It is our belief that the future of pop music lies within these styles, and we are resolved to nurture the artists who will bring that future to pass.

HAKATAK MANIFESTO

SIX PRINCIPLES

1. There is no Cool
2. Fight Fire with Fire
3. Fly Low; Fly Fast; Eject Early
4. Metamusic for Ephemeral Global Undergrounds
5. Better to use Machines than to Become One
6. Everything is Music; Nothing is Music

There is no Cool

Every possible protest, perversion, and peccadillo known to man, or likely to be known, has been studied, analyzed, categorized, sanitized, and adopted by the corporate purveyors of teenage aspirations. The old men in suits have an absolute and preemptive lock on even the most minute and twisted subculture, and use each one as nothing more than marketing categories to be co-opted and exploited.

The producer, advertiser, consumer, and market researcher form a recursive, self-consuming feedback mechanism dedicated to one goal: maximization of profits for the owners of intellectual property. It is impossible to stay "ahead of the curve" in this cycle, to be "cool". The more one attempts to opt out of the mainstream, the more one becomes an unwitting generator of next month’s mainstream. (Zapatista burritos coming soon to Taco Bell! A taste of old Chiapas!) No style or sentiment is so subversive or nihilistic that it cannot be packaged for mass consumption.

1965= I Wanna Hold Your Hand
1995= I Wanna Fuck You Like an Animal
2006= I'll Let You Whip Me If I Misbehave

Same companies. Same motives.

Fight Fire with Fire

It is impossible to subvert the dominant paradigm when the dominant paradigm is subversion. If sincerity is impossible, irony is the next best thing. Capture and encapsulate the mainstream message; change the context. That is subversive. At least for now.

Since every form of protest will inevitably be packaged and sold as entertainment, entertainment itself can become the tool and the medium of protest. The regeneration, reconfiguration, and regurgitation of the mainstream is the only possible form of underground communication. Without the background noise of mainstream culture sampled and recycled, the interference patterns of the underground cannot become apparent.

Fly Low; Fly Fast; Eject Early

As world culture becomes a more and more homogeneous system, the hacker’s methods, the hacker’s tools, and the hacker’s goals become applicable to wider areas of endeavor.

Can you hack popular culture? Think musical worms, musical cuckoo’s eggs, musical trojan horses. Any system can be hacked, but the would-be hacker (or culture jammer) must fly low and fast enough to avoid being subsumed by the very system s/he would hack.

When the time is right, or when it becomes inevitable, accept being devoured by the gaping maw of pop culture, but release escape pods that can return to lower levels to begin the hack anew.

Metamusic for Ephemeral Global Undergrounds

Any use is fair use. Recycle the old to bring forth the new, creating metamusics to be consumed and comprehended (only) by the ephemeral global undergrounds that dissolve and reconfigure as each pattern becomes assimilated into the mainstream.

By their technique shall ye know them. Metamusics can rise faster, fly higher, and contain an entirely new level of meaning that will be lost on those for whom they are not intended.

Better to use Machines than to Become One

From those to whom much is given, much is expected. Use what the mainstream has provided to show what the Mainstream can never be. Use technology to expose what is truly human. Those who cannot control their tools risk being controlled by them. Irony without technique is simply sarcasm.

Everything is Music; Nothing is Music

Musique Concrete indeed! All hail the prescient St. Russolo, who foresaw what was coming, and what was needed to make sense of it – Music that radiates like a searchlight from "The Victorious Realm of Electricity."

Become your own ad. Advertise your freedom from advertising.

HIJAK - FIGHT BAK - HAKATAK