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V/Vm, "Sometimes Good Things Happen"
It's hard to know what to make of these two CDs. Both individuallybejewel-cased CDs have the same name and track titles. The cover art isalso identical except that one is the photographic negative of theother. Let's call the one + and the other -. I came to this releasewith no prior experience of V/Vm except for the curiously dismal littleAphex Twin CDs last year. I gave it my best positivist shot, avoidinginterpretation to see where it takes me. Not very far, as it turnedout. + is collection of lo-fi, vaguely dreamy soundscapes. It's almostlike an exercise in the various styles of early 90s ambient electronica-- drones, soft looping techno bleepery, some airy beats, plenty ofswooshes, all with a slathering of reverb and echo. But the variety isonly from track to track -- each piece is a static presentation of oneidea, which would be fine if it were a good one. None of them reallyhave anything to enjoy. The effect when listing through the album isthat ones hopes rise as each new track begins, perhaps because a changeis as good as a break, but then fall again, ever deeper, as you realizethat each one of them is a dreary, unimaginative regurgitation ofalready over-worked ideas, neither taking the respective genre forwardsnor a competent stylistic statement. Soon the pattern becomes apparentand one learns to temper the little lifts that each new track brings.The other disk, -, is in fact exactly the same in every respect exceptgenre. - is an exercise in 90s electronic noise. Noise is about sonicdiscovery and confrontation and demands entirely different skills fromthe electronica of +. The lift in hope as a track starts a bit biggerthan on +, and is occasionally even exciting for a moment but this iscompensated by a much faster decline. The overall trajectory as the CDprogresses is severe. The paucity of imagination is blatant. Is thatthe point? I wonder. I decided finally to allow interpretation ofintent into the equation; the packaging, after all, seems to demand it.V/Vm's Queen Mother tribute announcement shown on the Brain recentlyprovided a handy reference point. It seems that V/Vm is a bit of aprankster but everything I found shows the same lack of imagination,skill or entertainment value as the music. I developed the impressionthat what we have here is a no-talent faker embittered with resentmentof the achievements of others trying to work up an ultra-pomo mythologyto shroud the bad art. I went back to the CDs and, yes, that fits too.A one word summary? Wank. samples:
