I'm only familiar with VX as Peter Hope's pianist - figuratively speaking, the man who tickled the ivories on the excellent Kilo Price for Dead Shapes which you may possibly remember from here. His own, mostly instrumental, material - overlooking the possible absence of sounds deriving from anything much that might count as an instrument - while similarly raw and initially abrasive, is a whole different kettle of fish. It's noise in so much as there's little common ground shared with Herman's Hermits, but while my closest point of reference is probably the work of +DOG+, Minutes to Go-Go feels intensively sculptured, even structured without quite turning into an Art of Noise record. Amongst the electronic crunches, overdriven circuits, gated slabs of feedback and the like, we find remnants of what may once have been vocals, percussion instruments, and other sound sources warped and looped into shapes which seem to emerge and gain greater prominence with each listen, until you no longer notice quite what a racket it is, instead hearing something that might almost be - I don't know - a film soundtrack perhaps. It seems different to the involuntary admiration of fire extinguishers we sometimes experience at the end of an afternoon trudging around some gallery, because I don't think there's such a pronounced random element here. These patterns are surely more than shapes perceived in the ear of the beholder. Listen enough times and you'll find yourself transported to filthy truck stops in cyberspace, the medina in Marrakech, the inside of your own head, and other alien territories. Minutes to Go-Go is one hell of a trip.
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