| James Kirby  AKA James Leyland Kirby
Born: 9-May-1974
Birthplace: Edgeley, Stockport, England
Gender: Male
Religion: Atheist
Race or Ethnicity: White
Sexual orientation: Straight
Occupation: Electronic Musician Nationality: England
Executive summary: V/Vm, The Caretaker Audio butcher James Kirby records as V/Vm, releasing his music since 1996 under the self-maintained label V/Vm Test -- The Best of the Worst of the Worst of the Best. The better part of his music has been released under various heteronyms: the ringleader V/Vm makes several levels of noise, while The Caretaker draws on dark, hazy memories from the 1920s ballroom. Releases are generally unified by some awful, awful concept, the more obvious tearing down some deep-seated sacred cow.
Taking as its anthem the Lieutenant Pigeon song Mouldy Old Dough, his label V/Vm Test has released the most terrible music imaginable, often made to sound even worse. The label seems to pride itself on mass-producing sounds that no commercially-minded operation would touch. A perusal of its releases shows V/Vm Test getting the word out with the usual tricks -- 3" cds, picture discs and colored vinyl target the collector of curiosites, while the thrill-seeker may welcome several stellar compilations, particularly auraloffalwaffle (1999) and It's Fan-Dabi-Dozi (2003). V/Vm Test is also a pioneer in free online distribution of music, having offered whole releases for free, unencumbered download since 1997.
Sadly, he is most notorious for his plunderphonic work -- the mangled pop tunes of Sick Love (2000) for instance, where dredged-up hits like Chris de Burgh's "The Lady In Red" and The Bee Gees' "How Deep Is Your Love" undergo drastic surgery and pitch inversion. For a time his most visible release was Help Aphex Twin (2001), subtitled We Don't Give A Shit ... Because You Don't Give A Fuck, an attack on self-mythologizing bedroom knob twiddler Richard D. James. Kirby was an unsung casualty in the war against corporate music and bad copyright law, after his gonzo 2003 release Relax -- a Frankie Goes to Hollywood orgy, released on CD, 12", 7", and picture disc at great expense -- brought down the hammer of the British Phonographic Industry and forced him into hiding, threatening his label's existence.
Kirby re-emerged in 2005 after a long, not unproductive hiatus. Finding only disgust for the now-trendy regurgitation of the past in mashup form, his first act was to revive one of the few untrampled byways of his raver youth, Belgian New-Beat, through a single 12" later supplemented by a series of online-only releases. Late in the year, he unveiled a large, new work under his parallel alias The Caretaker, Theoretically Pure Anterograde Amnesia, which all came to over six hours of new music. But this was just a taster for his most ambitious project of all, and the conclusion of a decade's efforts as V/Vm -- the V/Vm 365 project. Kirby stated at the outset that "The idea is basically to create and upload free audio for one whole year and leave a massive big mess behind, warts and all for you to digest as you see fit." Each day for all of 2006, Kirby created new music and released it all for free on his website. By the end of December, he had produced over 600 audio tracks, well over fifty hours of free audio, over six gigabytes of freely licensed music. V/Vm
The Caretaker
Official Website:
http://www.brainwashed.com/vvm/
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