VX - Minutes to Go-Go (2024)

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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Hope + VX - Kilo Price for Dead Shapes (2024)

As my Peter Hope albums multiply to the point of requiring their own shelf, here's another which somehow manages to sound like a new direction despite delivering a blast of familiar intensity with weapons from the same sonic arsenal. The distortion is, as ever, incredible, hinting at things recorded on the condenser mics of mono portable cassette recorders blowing the transistors on an ancient fuzz box someone found in the outside toilet; and yet despite this wall of audio dirt, everything remains somehow sufficiently clear and distinct for a groove. I should probably make an effort to avoid the usual comparisons with Suicide, Chrome and the like, although it may be worth mentioning that you could probably stick it at the bluesier end of the Sleaford Mods spectrum without too many objections. It doesn't really sound like Hope's Exploding Mind, or his work with Fujiyama or David Harrow, but it inhabits the same universe.

This time it's one Neil Whitehead, recording as VX, providing the contrast with, I would guess, loops of the sort of drum kit you only ever encountered in village halls when you were a teenager - all the crash and clang of the cutlery drawer - and a shitload of distorted bass guitar hogging the rest of the bandwidth, and I suspect multitracked in a few instances; so it's possibly comparable to an angrier We Be Echo - specifically the current bass heavy version - or if We Be Echo had the impact of Motorhead, it would feel something like this. The fact of there still being someone alive who would produce a record that sounds like this gives me some hope for the future of the human race.