above: Matthew McQueen Photo: Yasara Gunawardena

How to spin out a decentralized autonomous organization from a record label isn’t exactly clear, but Matthew McQueen and his compatriots are figuring it out as they go

“I just wanna provide opportunities for the good shit that people are making.”

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Matthew McQueen grew up in Atlanta to parents with good music taste. Digging through their record collections, he developed a love for hip hop and sample-based culture, eventually making his own beats and pursuing a career in music. He adopted the artist moniker, Matthewdavid, released studio albums and started his own record label, Leaving Records – one of the first labels to spawn a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO).

It wasn’t an altogether smooth ride from his early music-making days, though. At age 14, music became an especially important outlet when his parents moved the family to suburban Florida – a more insular community than metropolitan Atlanta. When some of his early music was leaked via Napster to his high school – already an isolating place for McQueen – he experienced an existential crisis that pushed him even further into his music.

That journey continued to develop when he found college radio. At Florida State University he got involved with WVFS, discovering LA’s electronic underground and beginning to envisage a future out west – to “maybe start a record label, maybe start a record shop,” he told me recently.

In 2006 he took the first step, moving to LA in pursuit of that dream. He landed himself an internship at dublab, a community-powered, nonprofit radio station he’d stumbled upon through WVFS. Over time he worked himself further into the community, DJing and getting to know the artists who came through the studio. 

During one Ras G show, he encountered the artist dak, a glitchy experimentalist whose lo-fi concoctions are more akin to Stockhausen than anything you’ll hear in main streams. McQueen was struck by the music, and by the realization that experimental music is too often damned to the periphery, lacking enough commercial interest to appeal to record labels. 

That moment became formative to his record label, Leaving Records, an “all genre” artist community that focuses on “uplifting experimental voices.” dak’s standthis cassette became the label’s first non-Matthewdavid release. “[dak didn’t] let everyone in his head,” McQueen told Bandcamp, a quality shared by many Leaving artists and one that McQueen has personally associated with genius.

Whether or not others ascribe to that definition of genius, the canon of experimentalists does get overlooked, despite the fact that we owe them a great debt. They grant license to all who create, inspiring us to expand our conceptions of music – consider the La Monte Young lineages, where wild invention threaded its way through bands such as Velvet Underground and Sonic Youth and eventually through our radio speakers. 

Leaving Records, in many ways, is a contemporary torchbearer of that spirit, perhaps awaiting historical context to shine light on its own roster of pioneers. From the frenetic drum syncopations of Deantoni Parks to the cosmic musings of Laraaji to the dreamlike croons of Julia Holter, McQueen has curated a vision defined by the undefined, strung together by artists who share an unapologetic sense of freedom. They’re unencumbered by traditional rules and bear enough insouciance to drown out the noise that fills most of our heads. Perhaps that is the recipe for genius.

A Leaving Records event Photo: glenjamn

With such an approach it’s no surprise that McQueen and Leaving Records would dive into web3 before most. During the pandemic, McQueen and multidisciplinary artist Lani Trock spent days with a small group sitting in Trock’s garden, exploring the budding web3 movement and its potential to better support artists and upend systemic inequity of all kinds. 

The DAO model resonated with Leaving’s spirit of collectivism and experimentation, so last July, the team announced Genre DAO, a token-driven membership community for the Leaving label. Like the experimentalists before them, their charge into new territory paved a path that has assuredly expanded conceptions of how things can be – and like the great experimentalists, they didn’t commit thoughtlessly or without form, or just to be first. 

Those conversations in the garden unearthed a vision of a more equitable world where art plays a crucial role. That alone was enough to commit early, but the team left lots of space for development, aware that web3 is mycelial, guided by an open-source ethos that is constantly iterating and rapidly propagating. In the face of such unfettered transformation, they’ve chosen to tread mindfully, observing and participating with care until some kind of collective wisdom takes root. 

Fittingly, Genre DAO – literally garden grown – joined me recently as a group: McQueen, Trock, Aaron Rays, and Jacqs – all of whom are LA-based artists and core contributors to the community. Together we explored how McQueen’s “uplift experimental voices” vision has guided the DAO to a strong foundation, and how their personal histories have intersected – many thanks to dublab – to help carry it into this emerging world that holds so much promise.

Jacqs: I grew up in LA so my connection to the LA music scene was visceral, quite frankly. I've studied music my whole life. I went to school for music. I was a professional opera singer for years, and I minored in bassoon, so I've played in some incredible opera houses and incredible concert halls, but it's all very stuffy.

So I had a really cool babysitter that would steal me and take me to Project Blowed, which was this open mic session in Leimert Park. And that's kind of how all of those open mic sessions really got my blood going and really got me excited. And from there I found dublab actually, also a big formative part of how I was introduced to the LA music scene, and that's how I found Low End Theory. And Low in Theory was the first club that I went to.

I turned 18 a month before Low End Theory opened and I've grown up with that scene and with the people. And I'm so excited for all of the success that's come out of Low End Theory – just seeing people winning Grammys – it’s such a surreal thing, knowing where it started and how, and where it started and where it is now. 

I've also guest DJ'd on dublab a couple of times and you know, I would say dublab is one of those institutions in Los Angeles where so much is sprouted out of it, because it's such a beautiful organic community that is extremely supportive of any of the aligned visions that any of the artists come to them with.

And I've found so many incredible community members that I'm still very close to through dublab. I'm a radio champion. I love the radio. So it's great that they've been around for 23 years and I think I've been donating for 20 years of those 23 years.

Lani: Well, first happy birthday dublab, 23 years this week, right? So I grew up in Hawaii and then went to high school in San Diego. And I'll say music was my first love – I grew up playing music. My mom was a music teacher my whole childhood – she taught private lessons in her garden and then went on to get a PhD in electronic music theory.

And now she's a music professor. So I grew up always with music around and playing music. After school I ended up migrating more into visual arts, but in the last five to ten years that's come back full circle of music reintegrating into my visual art practice.

I primarily make immersive installations. And then I have a social performance practice. So I facilitate musical movement – participatory experiences inside of those environmental installations. So it kind of feels like almost coming back to that first love. It feels core in my DNA.

Matthew and I were introduced many years ago by dear friend and collaborator Carlos – also co-founder of dublab. It seems like dublab is at the heart center of this whole conversation. 

I'd been researching about blockchain for several years as a part of an art project that I've been working on for about five years. And I was very curious about how blockchain could help transform society in a positive way and disrupt current stagnant and broken systems in order to allow something new to come through. 

Matthew and I started DMing about the things that I was posting because he was also curious and had someone else in his life that was giving him prompts towards web3.

And there was a lot of hype, but a lot of negative press about web3 – particularly the environmental impact, so he started reaching out to me asking what I was reading and listening to and like why I was feeling optimistic rather than pessimistic. 

At the time I was building an archive of my research of broader ideas of how we might reimagine society. And there was a blockchain section of that archive. I was encouraged by them to create a whole other separate website just to house the blockchain research, and around that time we also started hanging out in my garden and just sort of chatting about blockchain and web3. And that sort of led to the formation of the DAO.

Aaron:  I'm the youngest of six, so one of my older brothers, I remember being at a concert of his and he was playing the drums and I must have been three or something like that – very young and struck in a very memorable way by seeing him do this drum fill on these toms. So I started playing drums soon after and was introduced to a bunch of different kinds of music from other siblings, like Prodigy and Daft Punk, while growing up in rural areas in California. 

I was also homeschooled for a few years, and my dad would teach me how to play the piano – it was one of our classes, like learning Für Elise. So piano and drums ended up sticking with me. And that's what's carried me through. 

I started producing in like 2010. I was living in New York for a little while after having finished DIY tours as a drummer and also some sideman kind of gigs. I just wanted to be able to create my own sounds, so I went to YouTube University and started plucking around and now I'm here.

I moved back to LA in 2017 and found this community and have since released some music with Matthew. And for the first project that I put out with Leaving, we actually did a little NFT drop on Foundation. It had some good success and it's been just a joy learning about the potential impact of this space – and particularly how it can affect the lives of artists who wanna be ultimately creating from a place of free form expression, not needing to make art a certain way – like the capitalistic kind of endeavors that we go through when we're making creative choices.

Matthew:  Yeah, there aren't many Genre tropes in the web3 space. I mean, there's a lot EDM – and a lot of hip hop, which is dope. I just wish there were more experimental music or harsh noise or collage or ambient or the more left fringe…provocative music Genres expressed in web3. 

Right now, it feels like the gatekeepers of the space that were the most literate are in the tech space. And so EDM is adjacent to that. But I do like how hip hop culture has found a way in this space. I feel like that's a huge win for marginalized artists, culture and community. 

I think Leaving is trying to provide an alternative narrative to what web3 music could look like. We've been kind of slow lately, but our whole thing is just taking our time – not rushing, but still speaking.

Every Wednesday Jacqs has been doing Twitter spaces. We have our Genre DAO Twitter and that seems to be still active and people still chime in and follow it. 

Jacqs: And there are regular contributions, especially our music production channel in discord is poppin, and the ‘plug your stuff’ channel. I always direct people to the ‘work in progress’, which is music production, or if you have stuff to share, ‘plug your stuff’. So we have a thriving community of people dropping their links and sharing tips and sharing news about music production in general, which is probably one of my favorite channels.

DeCential: I appreciate the fact that you're taking it slow. It's wise given how nascent the space is – people are still trying to figure out how DAOs work. What is the optimal way to actually function within this new structure? 

Jacqs: I will say that the reason I went to other organizations to learn more is primarily because I wanted to use the best case – you know, what the best practices are, discover those practices for the DAO here.

I've definitely launched off of a lot of what Lani has researched and we have this Telegram chat where we're constantly sending each other, ‘this is what this other proposal's doing’ and ‘this is what they're doing over here’ and ‘this is what the treasury is doing over here’, and ‘did you see this cool project?’

We can do something like that. So we're constantly sharing ideas and figuring out what the best approach would be that is in line with what we can do and what is possible. So we're just constantly in this inspiration loop with the people in the community.

DeCential: Yeah, there are so many interesting things happening and so many new ideas that are slowly creating contours for how this works. I'm curious because – even with the slower pace now – you’re one of the first labels that I heard about that was willing to take that leap of faith and actually spin out a DAO, which takes a lot of courage when there isn't much precedent.

I'm curious to hear more about the conversations that were happening in the garden about web3. What was the tipping point behind being, ‘okay, let's do it.’?

Lani: I think Leaving had a really long and beautiful history of empowering traditionally marginalized voices. And the way that I like to think about the parallels between the label and the potential of DAOs is this movement away from this homogenized culture and into these micro, niche, sub-communities that are interlocking and sharing resources with each other.

I think about web3 as an enabler of mycelial networks, you know, and that as artists, we can create these mutually beneficial, collaborative communities that are evolving away from this ‘winner take all’ mindset and towards how we can collaborate with each other and share our knowledge.

We started to tap into these little communities that were popping up of other music folks that were dipping their toes into the web3 space, and Telegram or Discord channels that sprung up where we were sharing what we were working on and our ideas. And also shouting out each other's projects. I think we have all encountered a real sense of comradery and I think there’s a genuine desire to evolve away from this hyper-capitalist competitive mindset and really embrace an idea that has lived within the label in its whole existence – which is that there's space for all of our voices here, and that all expressions are valid and valuable. 

And I see what's happening with the DAO as an extension of that ethos and an opportunity for us to experiment with how that can be actualized in economic forms that create that kind of support for artists – not just in recognition, but in longevity and ongoing financial support for them as well. 

DeCential: I love that – do you want to add anything to that Matthew?

Matthew: During that time it was me, Lani, my partner Diva, and then a colleague who goes by Samsonite, who was a very influential person to introduce me to this technology and the potentials that it could offer for our artists community.

We were talking a lot about the technology as it relates to providing opportunity for musicians and artists as an alternative to the industry. And also talking about the industry as we know it and the current systems that we have to follow through in the narrative that we've been told all of our lives… It's fascinating to me that there's an alternative, especially during these bleaker pandemic times.

Lani was just blowing our minds, talking about the potential. And Holly Herdon has talked about it too – you know, housing DAOs, and collective cooperative  organizations forming, not just around our communities, but providing health services, educational services, housing services with this technology – with this alternative form of currency and this alternative form of organization and administration… cooperative forms of organization to provide resources for humanity.

That's what was really – during the garden talks – really turning us on, because we were all in it, right? And it was bleak and so it was really, really crucial to have those inspiring garden talks, to just talk about the potential for the future and how there's light at the end of the tunnel. And I still think the reason I haven't left this space, because I see the hope and I see the potential, and it's not like we're gonna get there tomorrow and realize the fullest potential tomorrow. 

It's just about education and awareness and providing tools and resources and education for artists who aren't privy or even interested and those who are a little curious. How do we do that sensitively? Eark park show that we throw, Lani has been designing a POAP, and a POAP is a free NFT that anyone can claim.

Granted, you have to like, know how to claim it. And like a lot of people are like, ‘I wanna get the pog, the trading card for the digital thing’. Mm-hmm. . And I'll talk about it like at the, and I'll show the thing people like, how do I get that? And I'm like, ‘Oh shit. I'm sorry I'm busy. Go talk to Jacqs or go talk to Lani. [laughs]

But anyway, little things like that, you know? Little creative, accessible, semi-accessible things along the way for the fan community and for the artists creating with us here.

Lani: Yeah I think the slow movement is really essential. Especially at that time when the market was really up, there was so much pressure to go be the first to do the thing. While there's definitely value in just jumping in and getting your feet wet and doing the thing, I think – especially in such a heightened environment – taking time to witness and observe what's happening and how everything feels and to really tune into what our core mission and values and objectives are has been a really powerful strategy.

And I don't know that we set out to do that so intentionally, but that's kind of how it's emerged. Jacqs and I are both contributing to web3 organizations, so we're really witnessing on the ground how DAOs are operating, and researching new tools that are emerging and getting a sense of what's available to us and how we might work with those things. 

And then being able to be a bridge between the artists that are totally new and don't have a wallet yet. Something that we've identified as a core value or intention for us as a DAO is to be a bridge and to be able to educate and onboard and support artists as they're just newly entering the space. And be supportive of their first step into the web3 land.

DeCential: Yeah for the next couple years that's gonna be incredibly important work. I'm curious overall what the response was from both the artists on the Leaving roster and the community at large, and how that's evolved over the past year.

Aaron: Yeah it's been a mixed bag to be honest. The community that Leaving has cultivated are generally a very aware cast of different folks. I think with the environmental concern…there was some strain. There were definitely some relationships and some core fans that were disappointed.

Matthew: There was a lot of disappointment, yeah. But then there was also a faction of people who were pretty open-minded and supportive and enthusiastic. But we definitely faced a lot of pushback. 

Has that changed? I think there's more of an openness to the potentials and the tools that the space provides. I know personally I'm getting hit up by artists who weren't hitting me up at that time who are now interested. So that's something to note. 

I mean we minted our own social token called $GENRE. And I try to, every now and again, emphasize that that exists – as something that our artist community should be holding that has a value to it, that has a utility to it. Educating people on what this is in our community has been slow also, but every now and again there are these moments…like, ‘Oh, I wanna know more about that’ and ‘I'm interested in knowing a little bit more about NFTs or the Discord community’. 

It's not just NFTs, but when we had these early garden conversations, Lani was like ‘I foresee a time in the not so distant future where NFTs will be as commonplace as buying a loaf of bread’. 

A digital publication of work is going to be almost the same thing as we're describing NFTs as now, but just so seamless and efficient with the technology. I don’t know, I'm excited. I'm a glass half full person – I've always been. That’s how this label operates and how this community operates.

I just wanna provide opportunities for the good shit that people are making. And I just feel like it would be an oversight to not explore this space on behalf of all of this amazing music community that we're in together. Especially now when the opportunities aren't as commonplace. It's a little tougher right now as artists, and it's always been tough, but [with] pandemic zones, people canceling tours…

Jacqs: I just saw that Santigold had to cancel all of her tour because of rising costs of gas and it’s insanity. It's just really tough time right now for a lot of artists, but there's hope. That's why we're exploring this territory because there's still hope.

Lani: Yeah. I think we're entering a time with the shift of how cryptocurrency as a whole is going to affect our monetary system, and we have an opportunity to ask these deeper philosophical questions about what money is really for and how we want it to function in society and what we want to fund in society. 

And that NFT art can actually be a funding mechanism for whatever we wanna create. And really it just becomes a coordination game from there, right? How can we organize ourselves and decide collectively what we want to fund and create?

And that's why I think with the emergence of DAOs, even just as a philosophical idea, we have this mechanism now to collectively decide what it is that we want to create together and how we want to fund that and that we can actually use our art to do it. It's a paradigm shift, and a really exciting one.

I'm also deeply optimistic and excited to see what emerges and how art can be used to fund free housing and free food and free energy, and all of the things that make society function and that we all need to live and thrive. These new tools can allow us both to sustainably fund artists and to find whatever it is that we want to exist in the world.

The possibilities are really endless. It's really just the limit of our imagination and our capacity to coordinate effectively with each other. 

DeCential: Absolutely. I think that’s beautiful and I think that's one of the most important things that's happening in web3. This is the opportunity to ask these deeper philosophical questions that make us reimagine what everything in the top layer actually is and what it's for.

In terms of what you're doing with the social token – the partnership with Catalog, and how Catalog is accepting the $GENRE token. I think that's really cool and speaks to a sense of mutualism that exists in this space of organizations supporting other organizations, with people orienting around a vision where they can kind of recreate the protocol with different incentives.

Matthew: Yeah, on that note, FWB, one of probably the biggest web3 social groups, has been very supportive in the past and are now coming back around – which we need to talk about,  through the Leaving community and have been providing opportunities for our artists and for funding, 

Now there are more opportunities on the table relating to the events that they've been throwing and kind of just different stuff for our artist community and how they overlap and how we both mutually benefit from collaborating with one another.

I feel like FWB is a good example, and I don't mean to get too far on a tangent, but people know them as a crypto community, right? People don't associate Leaving with that. So I want to be sensitive when we're collaborating publicly and promoting a collaboration with a crypto organization.

That's just an easy way to call FWB: crypto. That's not accurate. But there is a sensitivity with our collaboration there. We don't want to alienate anybody or skew somebody from the outside the wrong way. But again, it is about taking these risks and just kind of leaping into this as a means to provide opportunity, you know?

And educating, being like, ‘Hey, if you wanna know more, you're curious or you're upset, let's talk about why we're doing this, you know?

DeCential: I mean, some people have to do that in order to inspire others to do it, and hopefully at some point there's going to be a tipping point in which people are like, ‘Oh yeah, I get it.’

And it'll be easier to onboard people and less difficult to educate them. I'm curious to hear, as you're researching DAOs and taking your time and making sure that you're customizing this in the way that works best for you, and as you're exploring other partnerships with other web3 organizations…who have been some of the exemplar models that you're seeing? The most exciting music web3 projects that you would love to partner with?

Jacqs: I know FWB is something that I joined because I wanted to look towards their model because I saw that they were doing a lot of great stuff and so we've definitely learned a lot from looking at their advanced model. And it's really great and exciting that they see an aligned partner in us as well.

Aaron: For sure. I think we almost resonate with them as a model more than any other music project. It’s ultimately a community project, which feels like that's what this label ultimately is, more of a community project.  I mean Catalog, for example, they’re pals, and seeing what they're doing and their evolution. And we’ve been in contact with Nina Protocol about launching something with their new platform called The Hub.

Lani: Yeah. I think what they're doing is particularly exciting to me. So they're on Solana and what's so exciting to me about what they're building is that they've created a token rewardable curation model.

This is one of the things that I've identified as a missing piece in the current decentralized publishing model that's really essential. You know, so many artists that I know came in during that NFT boom and minted something on Foundation or Zora, and if they were not being featured by the platform, they just kind of got lost in the shuffle.

And if they did it in the peak moment, they spent hundreds of dollars to mint something and then they were just like, ‘Okay, fuck this.’ You know? So I think integrating token rewarded curation and really integrating curators into the publishing model and the decentralized curation into this is such an essential, missing piece at this time.

And I'm really excited for us to play with that tool. And I think basically how they have it set up is if you curate a collection, you can set a finder's fee so it doesn't actually come out of the artist's cut. It's on top of that. And theoretically someone could circumvent your finder's fee by going straight to the artist's page and buying it directly from them.

But I think that what I'm really curious about with blockchains is that when things are open and transparent, how that might enable radical generosity and – you know, what Jacqs was saying about how you've been supporting dublab all these years and how much love and appreciation you have for that…I feel like that's the real power and potential that we can unlock here: really  honoring and rewarding curators as an integral part of the musical ecosystem. And starting to create these infinite games that we can all play together where musicians and curators are all participating in this beautiful, creative collaboration and curation and everyone's being rewarded in a mutually beneficial way for participating in that ecosystem.

DeCential: That's really beautiful. I love that vision.

One of the things I think about a lot for organizations who were existing prior to the proliferation of web3 and are now exploring it as a means of transitioning into a different governance model like Leaving has done. Matthew this is something that you've been doing for 15 years. I’m curious how you've been able to maintain a certain culture because of your vision, and how you think about continuing to maintain that vision while also opening up to more decentralized decision-making.

Matthew: Well, I’ve identified maybe seven core DAO members who help me make decisions in this space. We're constantly communicating, engineering, inspiring in this space together. And I just trust and love these people, you know? We haven't opened it up, truth be told, to a more accessible token holder governance model. I don't know if we will. You know, a DAO doesn't have to be like, you hold X amount of tokens and you get to make decisions. That's one way that a DAO can work. I mean, we are collectively informing one another, making decisions in a decentralized space that is hinged on cryptocurrency and has cool art projects attached to it.

And that's our DAO. We have a token and we can do all kinds of cool shit and engage our fan base and our artist base with this token. And we all talk about how to do that and how to evolve that token together. And that's a DAO. That's our DAO. 

And we're talking about a lot of cool shit together that could benefit the whole, you know – it's not just to benefit us, that's not why we're doing this. We're doing this to talk about how it can benefit the community as a whole. And that's what our decision making is rooted in.

Jacqs: Yeah. It's also going back to our slow approach to everything. We've already learned in the space in a very short amount of time that token voting is flawed. And so we're really exploring governance in a very meaningful and slow method. We're just being, again, very intentional about governance and learning the best tools. 

Lani: I think, yeah, Matthew has built with deep intentionality over all of these years, and I think all of us have a pretty clear connection to or understanding of that ethos.

So we’re more or less on the same ethical, philosophical page. And from my other experiences in DAOing, I will say that total permissionless, total decentralization tends to lead to chaos and non-productivity. So I think that everyone that's dancing in the DAO space is learning that there is a fine balance to strike between openness and a core team that is keeping the ship running.

So yeah Jacqs you've said it so beautifully – that this intentional slow building will lead to sustainable outcomes and will carry on the vision that Matthew's been stewarding all of these years into these new forms.

DeCential: Love that. Just to wrap up quickly with one last question. For each of you, what’s the most unexpected thing that you've encountered in your embrace of web3, and the thing that you're most excited about coming up over the next year for this community?

Jacqs:  I'm a community Maximalist and futurist. And that's what really excites me is the possibility of converging and convening in really meaningful ways – in restructuring what community actually means and how it can give back to the people who are participants.

Aaron; Yeah, I'm here for what it can mean for this music community in particular – how we can shake up the traditional music models a little bit and what we can discover in our experiments and share with other organizations trying to mess with the status quo, whatever they're involved with. Because there’s frankly room for improvement in a lot of different sectors.

Lani: Yeah, I would echo both of those sentiments and I'll say I'm excited to see how these tools will enable us to move away from traditional middlemen, hierarchical models for both music and art production, and how these tools can be a sustainable funding mechanism for free public art.

And for communities to offer their art practice as a gift to the community, and how we can just transcend the old limits and birth something new together. 

Matthew:  I feel so passionately with everything that y'all just said. So my sentiments are just directly those things. One of the wildest experiences within the last year for me was that, at the top of this year, I published a Mirror article as a means of fundraising – essentially for the treasury. And seeing us earn four or five $ETH worth just from this manifesto statement with a really sick NFT edition that looked and sounded really cool… seeing the success of that and the people pull up from not just the quintessential corners of web3, but outside of web3 too.

It was a kind of onboarding because they heard about this way to fund Leaving during this really weird time of our lives with new technology. That was very humbling and mindblowing and I was very excited and that instilled a lot of hope, you know, into my heart and soul as a means to progress.

Keep with this thing. Whatever we're doing here, just keep with it. No matter our pacing – sometimes we're gonna be ramping up, sometimes it's gonna be a little bit slow. But just stay with it. That was a really essential moment to remind me that it's worth it.