Intelligent Sound’s Peter Anthony juggles real-life responsibilities and artistic dreams

Peter Anthony’s biggest obstacle right now is his full-time job. It’s your average weekday gig, he tells me, not wanting to go into details. The trouble with the job is that every time he makes up his mind to quit, he gets a promotion.

“For a guy with no college degree, it’s good,” Anthony says, “but I don’t love it. I’d really rather be concentrating on this stuff.”

“This stuff” is the topic of our conversation: Anthony’s electronic music label, Intelligent Sound, which he has been building since its launch in May 2014 with a monthly DJ night at Niche (the space above the Uptown Arts Bar). Two months later, he made the business official. Anthony — who has arrived to our early morning breakfast meeting at Chubby’s on Broadway wearing an Intelligent Sound T-shirt and uncombed hair — dumps a container of diner creamer into his coffee as he reflects on the necessary role the label plays in the local music community.

“When you say ‘electronic,’ people get a different idea in their heads,” Anthony says. “They think of some EDM rave fest or something. I’m trying to focus on down-tempo and more instrumental styles of electronic music. I started really following those [styles] and falling love with them, and then I met a couple beat makers locally and I sort of realized there was this void.

He goes on: “It felt like, you know how sometimes if you’re not in a particular city where a specific community is thriving, you get overlooked and kind of passed over? That’s what was happening here. Anyone local who was interested in that kind of thing didn’t really have a way to connect.”

That changed when Anthony approached DJ and producer Rick Maun — then performing and releasing material under the name Osiris-1 — about re-releasing some of his tracks as a full project under the Intelligent Sound brand.

“I worked on that for the first summer,” Anthony says, “and got the cassette released, got everything duplicated and sold some copies, and really started learning it and just started really enjoying releasing stuff. I began enjoying that more and more, and more people came around who were producers and wanted to be involved. It’s really just snowballed from there.”

Visibility has helped. Maun credits the Niche residency — which falls on the fourth Saturday of every month — with spreading the Intelligent Sound gospel.

“For a while, something like this was very nonexistent,” Maun tells me over the phone. “There really wasn’t a place where weird kids that like ambient or noise or different styles of electronic music could go. With Intelligent Sound, it’s opened up a lot of opportunities for artists to display what’s going on their home studios. They can bring their stuff out and play it on Niche’s [Meta Hi-Fi] sound system the way it’s meant to be heard. Now, there’s a place in Kansas City where people who really appreciate that kind of sound can hear it, and a community where they can get exposure.”

Our breakfast platters have arrived, and Anthony methodically coats his biscuits and gravy in Cholula. As our discussion continues, he has a hard time concentrating on the dish in front of him. When I ask about what he feels Intelligent Sound has brought to the table, he speaks slowly and deliberately, his elbows resting on the table, hands clasped together.

“I think there were a lot of people who were doing these things already, sitting in their bedrooms, making beats and doing this sort of stuff,” he says. “But with what we’ve been doing — the releases and the shows — it builds the awareness of other people in the area. And it’s grown because people are like, ‘Oh, this is actually happening in my city, I’m going to go out and support this.'”

At this point, Anthony estimates the Intelligent Sound roster at around 40 artists, with about 35 of them from the Kansas City, Lawrence and Topeka areas. He doesn’t do anything as official as signing them; he prefers to think of the group as an organic collective whose members share music (via a private Facebook group) and support one another.

“There’s a lot of different people who are involved, and a lot of them are really just members who contribute and who I bounce ideas off,” Anthony says. “We all kind of approve some of the things together. Intelligent Sounds is a record label — we do release albums — but ultimately, it’s community-
oriented. Some of the artists book their own shows, and we promote them or vice versa. Sometimes we back the artist, but we’re not putting out their music — we’re just helping them build a platform to gain more viewers and listeners.” Anthony pauses. I imagine that his biscuits and gravy have long gone cold. “The point is that we all work together. Intelligent Sound wouldn’t be where we are with just me.”

On Friday, Intelligent Sound releases Mixed Plate, its first compilation. It’s a 30-song digital download, featuring artists from all paths of electronic music to hip-hop and other genres. All except for three songs have been produced exclusively for Intelligent Sound by familiar names — Maun, Lincoln Marshall, Arkutec, Lion, Sigrah — as well as a few KC originals who have moved on. (A smooth, horn-heavy Miles Bonny track crops up early.)

Anthony has been working on tracking the Mixed Plate for more than four months. Between that, the full-time job and, he adds, a newborn baby, sleep falls low on his list of priorities.

“The juggling is difficult, but this is a passion,” he says, “and I feel like we’re on the right path. There’s something really positive here that we’re doing, so it’s motivating.”