Links:

pfMENTUM:

Dedicated to creative music—and the musicians that make it.

pfMENTUM (pronounced, pee-eff-mehn-tuhm) began in 1995 as a newsletter associated with the internationally acclaimed Ventura New Music Festival. The VNMF, and its associated events, was a long-running concert series that featured creative musicians from around the world in the beautiful Ventura City Hall (Ventura, California) overlooking the Pacific Ocean. In 1999, Jeff Kaiser expanded pfMENTUM into a record label with the goal of enabling innovative sonic artists with releasing their music into the world.

In 2001 we also expanded the family of pfMENTUM to include another label, Angry Vegan™ Records. The artists are listed below, and the art from those records is included in the archive.

Sadly, pfMENTUM as a record label came to an end in 2022 due to the demands of other areas of life. Angry Vegan™ continues to this day, and you can find Angry Vegan™ T-shirts available below, as well as pfMENTUM T-shirts

The guiding principle for pfMENTUM was to assist and enable musical artists working with experimental and creative forms to distribute their product to radio stations and reviewers in the U.S. and abroad, and to also provide assistance in the graphic design and manufacturing process (from CDs, vinyl, cassette, DVDs, and more).

Unlike traditional labels, pfMENTUM was not based on a corporate profit model; rather, it was based on a collective/community model under which our artists maintain complete control and ownership of their work and finished product. This is in contrast to traditional labels that own recording masters, take a percentage of publishing and more. Yet, like traditional labels, because pfMENTUM had been directly involved with the production of more than 150 releases (as label, label subsidiary and manufacturing consultant), we were able to negotiate discounted manufacturing prices that were not usually available to individual artists. We would pass these savings on to the artist. The artist paid the manufacturing fees, and kept the bulk of the product.

pfMENTUM received payment in the form of physical copies out of the run and the proceeds from sales of our share of the product were used to fund pfMENTUM’s website, ongoing development of the distribution database, and physical storage.

The co-directors of the label, being artists themselves, were not driven by profits but by a belief that in operating collectively under a common banner, all members could benefit from the combined audience who come to learn about the variety of creative work being done by the musicians, artists, engineers, and more (numbering over 700) under the pfMENTUM organizational umbrella.

If you are interested in large orders, please contact me using the contact form on this website as I still have some product available.

Jeff Kaiser: Founder, Co-Director

Emeritus:
Keith McMullen: Co-founder of the original pfMENTUM Newsletter
Louis Lopez: Co-Director
Steuart Liebig: Artist development and liason, design, operations management
Max Gualtieri: Co-Director
Andrew Pask: Director of Development

Links:

pfMENTUM:

Dedicated to creative music—and the musicians that make it.

T-Shirts still available:

Over 700 musicians, artists, engineers, poets, and more have been involved with pfMENTUM and Angry Vegan Records since the beginning. Below is a list of those involved with our recorded projects.