V/VM

Between nothingness and eternity

Genre: ELECTRONIC

Boomkat Product Review:

V/VM return after a ten-year hiatus by colliding two worlds together and a stone cold reminder of their divisive genius. It also coincides with the 20th anniversary year of V/Vm Test Records - the legendary label loved/reviled for their prescient, uncompromising inversion of music industry conventions since 1996. Between Nothingness and Eternity wears its pig’s heart proudly on its sleeve with an album designed to be played alongside Tim Hecker’s ‘Love Streams’, in memory of the now largely forgotten, Mrs Mills.

Mrs Mills’ extensive catalogue of pub-friendly, vamping ragtime cover versions, issued from the early ‘60s deep into the ‘70s, was once viewed as anathema to the cool kids despite the fact that in their heyday they unified thousands, if not millions, of sloshed party-makers up and down the breadth of blighty, yet have since been written out of the history by the same kids that pen it. Tim Hecker’s music, soaked in melancholia for ancient times and affected thru a subtle mix of distortion, emotions and pain, makes him a perfect fit for this odd pairing, and at the rotten trotters of V/Vm those disparate worlds collide with nonpareil insight, with results that speak to a purportedly forgotten world, which is actually still here/there, lurking under the glam lacquer of modernity, wedged in gentrified corners and still cackling on a thursday afternoon knees up.

By using the same Melodyne software algorithm Tim used to extract and map the classical orchestrations of Love Streams, V/Vm turn in a bone dry accompaniment rendered in Mrs Mills’ very own keys, which were recorded for posterity by the Cinesamples team at London’s world famous Abbey Road studios, before adding a pall of whiskey mist reverb to leave us drunk on enigma.

The results are instantly classic for any V/Vm fans, yet may be considered demented by the Mrs Mills fraternity. As for the Tim Hecker legion, it’s the dream collaboration they secretly always wanted, allowing what can be a solitary listening experience with his work to become a group activity with friends.

Please join us in raising a glass to these glorious times and the possibly fleeting return of modern music’s most vital duo...

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