Sentaku: The Quiet Weight of Running a Label

Running a label is often seen through what reaches the surface: releases, events, artwork, momentum. But underneath, there is another process quietly unfolding. One shaped by uncertainty, friendship, pressure, patience, and the constant challenge of staying true to something while growing alongside it.

For the team behind Sentaku, building a label has never been only about music. It has been an evolving reflection of who they are, how they navigate doubt, hold space for one another, and learn to move through the unpredictability of the industry without losing themselves in it.

In this conversation, we speak with Alex the co-founder, about the inner side of running a label: uncertainty, slowing down, collective decision-making, and what it means to build something that lasts.

At what point did you realise running a label was as much an inner process as a professional one?

It didn’t come as a realisation but more as something we slowly felt. In the beginning, Sentaku was an extension of ourselves, a very direct, instinctive way to express what we were living, hearing, and sharing. So in a way, it was always an inner process.

What changed over time is that we grew alongside it, from young adults figuring things out to something more structured and more intentional. Through trial and error, good decisions and wrong ones, and moments of clarity and moments of doubt, that’s how we learned to shape it into something that could last. 

We started noticing patterns in how we react to pressure, deal with doubt, hold space for others, and navigate disagreements without breaking what binds us. That’s when it deepened. Sentaku wasn’t just something happening outside of us. It became something that constantly reflects and challenges us. That process is still ongoing.

Was there a moment where you questioned whether starting or continuing the label was worth it? What did that moment teach you?

There were many moments when we doubted, even moments when we came close to stopping entirely. Not as a single breaking point, but as phases when things slow down, when momentum fades, and when the distance between effort and outcome starts to feel too wide. Those moments forced us to pause and look at things differently.

Because we’re a collective, doubt is never carried alone. It becomes a shared process, conversations, reflections, and a way to bring in new ideas and new energy.

It also pushed us to embrace risk more consciously. We’ve always been drawn to a wide spectrum of sounds, and we didn’t want to reduce Sentaku to one direction just for the sake of clarity or expectation. So we accepted that exploring different aesthetics comes with uncertainty, but also with identity.

At the same time, we learned to take our time, to shape releases carefully, and to stand behind them fully. For us, it’s never been about doing more, it’s about building something that lasts, a catalogue where, even years later, the records still make sense and still carry something alive.

That’s what kept us going.

The music industry often glorifies constant productivity. How do you personally navigate pressure without burning out?

We’ve learned the hard way that following that rhythm disconnects you from yourself. This industry carries a certain pressure, things move fast, visibility shifts quickly, and there’s always the underlying reality that opportunities like distribution or production support can disappear just as fast. You can feel present one day and invisible the next.

Now we move differently. Our decisions are never based on one perspective alone, they go through all of us. And that sometimes leads to mistakes, but that’s part of the process. It’s how we learn, adjust, and refine the way we move forward.

We pay more attention to timing, to energy, and to whether something feels right before committing to it. We leave space intentionally. Because we realised that if we lose the sensitivity that drives what we do, then everything becomes flat.

So instead of chasing consistency, we try to stay authentic. And that naturally creates its own rhythm.

Have you ever had to pause, slow down, or rethink Sentaku for the sake of your mental health?

Yes. And it wasn’t a choice, it was necessary. There were moments when everything became too dense, with too many layers and too many expectations, internally and externally. Slowing down wasn’t about stepping away from Sentaku, it was about protecting what it stands for. We needed to create distance to see clearly again, and every time we did, we came back with something more grounded and precise.

Sometimes the only way to move forward is to stop forcing movement. And the time we took also allowed us to go deeper, and the next release is a good example of that. It took us almost a year to finish, and it carries a more intimate side of Sentaku. Each project feels like an evolution, like revealing a deeper part of ourselves.

What’s a silent struggle of running a label that people rarely talk about?

The constant need to hold everything together while navigating your own internal fluctuations. From the outside, it can look fluid: events, releases, visuals. But underneath, there’s continuous adjustment.

And there’s also something very human in it, the tendency to compare, to look at others, and to question your own pace or direction. Learning to stay focused on your own path without getting lost in that noise is a challenge in itself.

At the same time, you balance friendships and decisions. You make calls that affect people you care about. You carry doubts while still needing to move forward. And not everything can be shared. There’s a part of this that stays internal, between us, and that’s probably the quietest weight.

How do you deal with moments of uncertainty, financial, creative, or emotional, while still needing to lead?

It's an ongoing process. We don’t try to resolve everything instantly. We talk, we question, we challenge each other. A lot of it happens internally, like aligning our individual visions into something that still feels coherent for the label.

Uncertainty doesn’t disappear, but it becomes easier to navigate when it’s shared. And when clarity is missing, we come back to something simple: does this still feel true to what we’re building together? If yes, we move forward from there.

What part of running a label has surprised you the most, in a way you weren’t prepared for?

How much of it depends on factors you can’t control. We thought we could shape things more directly, plan, structure, and anticipate.

But reality brings its own variables like delays in pressing plants, technical issues, and unexpected shifts that slow things down or redirect the process entirely. A lot of what defines the journey happens outside of what you can predict.

And that requires patience, flexibility, and trust. That level of letting go wasn’t something we anticipated.

How has Sentaku changed you as a person, beyond music and business?

It made us more attentive. To people, to energy, to what sits beneath the surface.

It taught us to be patient with each other, but also to be honest when something doesn’t feel right. To protect what we’re building without closing ourselves off.

It also reshaped the way we relate to time: less urgency, more intention.

Sentaku didn’t just evolve as a project. It changed the way we move, think, and connect. And in many ways, it’s still doing that.

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