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May 8th, 2006 by Jonathan Fletcher (Permalink)
Label: V/VM 365 Year: 2006 Add Comments |
“The aim is to provide a direct link removing the need to promote and distribute the audio I produce for one year. You will get the lot from the shit to the sublime.”
Ploughing an increasingly lonely furrow, V/VM have survived as an underground irritant for a decade now, churning out some of the wildest digital audio mashes imaginable alongside more eerie faire like the contemporary séance of The Caretaker (of which more very soon).
V/VM 365 then is the label’s swansong and one gloriously massive fuck you to the stinking carcass that is our truly beloved pan-global music industry. On the link above, since January 1st, the label has been uploading at least one piece of new audio every day and will continue to do so until 31st December.
The aim behind this audio is for you, dear listener, to burn, distribute and USE for your own purposes. Remix it, sample it, construct edifices of brilliant white noise from it and send it back to them. This is a truly unique experiment and one that is undoubtedly of great financial and artistic strain to a label that refuses to compromise its vision one iota.
I’m not going to ‘review’ this audio- this is all about interaction and getting involved. But, this is not to say that the sound is not of the highest quality. To look at 3 days of last month, on the 2nd April there was a barely altered bargain bin Dusty Bin spin-off record (crap quiz show presented by crap comic with crap prizes), on the 3rd there were 2 moody, dramatic (and surprisingly almost unpsychotically cinematic) pieces of car chase audio (inspired by the Manchester M60 orbital- an audio Iain Sinclair) and on 4th there was a piece of doom-laden electro called ‘the kid plays in the sun’.
Also on offer has been the Autechre-like mild chaos of ‘senile dementia’ inspired by the beauty of late-night british (brutish) beer culture and the warm glitch of ‘harold bishop’ or even ‘Fredeadie’ which is some kind of accapella version of ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ distorted to such horrifying degree that it sounds like a descent into Hell. My favourite so far though has to be the 2nd May’s offering- a demonically queasy bending of the theme tune to the diabolically awful ‘Howards Way’ brit drama from way back. For those that don’t know, it narrated the shenanigans of a bunch of upper class nitwits fucking around on boats.
The web site and audio activities work as a diary (with a description of weather, mood and location) as well as providing a critique of culture and a subversive alternative to the music business. And, don’t forget, there is some brilliant music here. It is a maniacal undertaking and one that truly warrants support.
V/VM 365 could not be a finer example of our definition of independent culture- our reason for writing and your reading here.
Get involved.
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