VCV - The Star Of The King Of The Dead

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4...according to our Ant on Wed 20 Aug, 2008.

VCV are the duo of prolific artists Brian Grainger (Milieu) and David Tagg. This project has them picking up their electric guitars for a mammoth improvised 56:42min piece entitled 'The Star Of The King Of The Dead', recorded over two years ago and still sounding fresh. The label describe this as space doom and I really couldn't put it better myself. This is less evil sounding than their last release but no less powerful with both players sounds working together tremendously as each one is assigned a channel. From one comes chunky harmonics and repetative chugging fuzz and through the other are spacey drones and distant melodies. The pace constantly mutates throughout the duration. This is a real journey and an interesting departure from what Grainger and Tagg create in their solo projects. Quality gear and limited to just 100 copies.

This month at SSR we're happy to finally unveil a record that was recorded as far back as late 2006: VCV's hourlong space-doom opus The Star Of The King Of The Dead. Long kept in the cool shadowy vault at SSR HQ, "Star King" has arrived in the form of 100 CD-Rs, continuing the minimal yet striking design aesthetic of the two previous VCV albums. The music documents VCV at their most minimal yet - two statuesque guitars stay their positions in each end of the stereo field, like soldiers at a castle gate, and slowly but certainly the sound that grows from your speakers begins to swell into an epic mass of distorted harmonies. Chunks of liquid-cement chords give way to glimpses of melodies that move at the speed of planets, and in the space of an hour, VCV have built a towering monolith of improvisational guitar work. This is the band at their most majestic, and the next chapter in their macrocosmic oeuvre.

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