| After this initial effort, the releases started
to multiply. When reviewing their catalogue you can find everything from
tributes to the Belgian New Beat, records about Christmas, Shostakovich,
Bruce Springteen or Aphex Twin. This variety and the, at times overwhelming
quantity, are the two features that stand out, especially when you take
into account that from the end of the 90s the label has mainly been the
work of one person "We both started the label, but Andy dropped out
of working full time around 1999, since then we kept working on some releases
together, often remotely even when we were in the same city, and then I
would put these releases out on the label. Though he is not involved these
days in releases or in any aspect of running the label he is always my first
port of call for advice and we still bounce ideas around when we both need
each others help and not only musically. So for example in case of the VVMT365
project that is a solo project of mine as I guess I took over the V/Vm name
and still use that whereas Andy works on his own audio under his aliases
Animal and Jansky Noise". "VVMT365" refers to the project
in which he has released more than 600 songs for free download during 2006
"Over the last ten years the music industry has changed beyond recognition
from the one in which V/Vm started in back in 1996. With V/Vm 365 i have
taken into account all of these changes and am providing a direct link between
creation and your own personal consumption of the audio I create."
Being people that have pushed the frontiers of intellectual property, its
hardly surprising that they are working with Creative Commons licences "Copyright
is so outdated now it's laughable, anyone with an issue about intellectual
rights these days is purely motivated by money and greed. In this day and
age of mass consumption and digital distribution everything is usable once
it's in the public domain so i don't see how anyone can have a problem with
their work being used, abused and distributed". Even though when answering
James refers to the present time, his way of working shows that he has always
filtered many of the rules through his own view and, expectedly so, this
stance has thrown up a number of issues: "Yeah I have had problems
but I am still here and fighting away and usually find laughter and stupidity
is the best form of defence against people who wear suits and smell of Money".
Among his many personal traits, his direct, critical and passionate attitude
is a prelevant one. "In my mind V/Vm have always known that they should
never change their passion to glory and have always attacked those who have"
is included in one of his irregular newsletters. |
| Its also important to at this point talk about
another characteristic of his work, aside from the explosive charge: humour.
With an important dose of absurdity, much of his critique takes the form
of jokes. By way an example, here is another extract from his monthly bulletin
"Also it's great to see Warp Records (EMI dressed in a designers republic
designed t-shirt) making their entire back catalogue available for download,
ok you have to pay, but it's a good reminder to those of you who don't know
that once Warp used to release challenging music and were on the frontline
of new music… I know people think V/Vm is anti Warp but the fact is
this, Warp used to be good and find new music and push new music, now they
make wallpaper music for people who like slippers, no challenge, no energy,
no attitude just a running soundtrack for BB2 and Channel four documentaries
or Newsnight. Hopefully one day the energy and attitude will return for
them and the bitterness they have for V/Vm will vanish, because all we wanna
see is something which justifies the HYPE that goes along with every warp
release these days". |
