 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
LABELS
ARTISTS
Interview with Matthew Hillier (Virtual)
Author: Radoslaw Bialek
Date: 16th of December 2007
01. What's the official name of your label? I'm asking because we have different versions in different places. Virtual or Virtual Musical Reality? I know the answer but it would be good if you finally say in the official interview which version is good so in the future there won't be any mistakes on Discogs.com or other websites.
Virtual is the name - not Virtual Records or Virtual World. Simply Virtual.
02. How did Virtual come into existence?
Virtual was started up as I wanted a vehicle for the more obscure and experimental music I do and which we found other labels don't feel is quite commercial enough at times. It's a way for me to have some total creative freedom and retain some control over some aspects of my music and what I do also.
03. Why this name?
The name relates to music as a virtual reality in your head or music as a virtual space - innerspace, etc. Most music I writes for people to lay down to, close your eyes, put the headphones on maybe and trip inward into innerspace or your imaginations virtual world hence virtual. It's all about music and sound as a Virtual innerspace.
04. Did the idea come up for Virtual before or after the release of the first Ishq album? Why did you decide to create your own label?
I was planning on doing a label before we did "Orchid" and because we were getting no joy with labels and the stuff we were doing just didn't appeal to the other labels we approaced. It was decided: let's just press up the CDs and sell it ourselves, then somewhere along the way Ishq was born and took over for a while but we were still left feeling we needed our own label for some sense of total creative and financial freedom.
05. When will be the end of the first series of Virtual releases? There are 12 CDs in total but what's next?
Well it doesn't look like much is happening with Virtual but it is in terms of work... The first series has 2 albums out and we have 2 finished here today and going off to be pressed in January. After the first series we will do others no doubt and were probably going to run a second series of minimal soundscupture stuff at the same time. We've also started an album of upbeat stuff which will be released on Virtual form as another series maybe... There's lots planned and underway.
06. ...Maybe a new label with its new series with f.e. not white but green covers?
We're not sure... but I will probably follow a pattern style wise.
07. Do you have any other strategic plans for Virtual?
We have no master plan but are planning on stepping things up as we have very good distribution offers now and can afford to basically keep writing and releasing. My main focus is release the next 2 Virtual albums asap into 2008 and as much other material as possible.
08. Who is in your label team and what does each member do?
Well I do most music but have music in progress written with Jake Stephenson from Optic Eye and Michael Martin from Indidginus, and Jacqueline who does the vocals for a lot of the Ishq music has also been writing an album and she takes care of all the office side of things. It's mainly me and Jacqueline but I hope to work with more people musically over time.
09. What's the biggest problems when running a label?
The biggest problem is selling enough music to survive but without ending up releasing bland "products" or making music with money in mind first. The hard thing is getting a balance as a label as it's so easy to begin to shape music for commerciality at the expense of spirit. Painting by numbers type music results where the label/business dominates the create process of takes to much control. Good products result with very little real creative substance or sense of freedom. We listen to music to feel free... You don't feel free from many "musical products". You feel there's to much emphasis on marketting and "sell sell sell" mentality. For me that stains the music and free spirit of art and creation. These forms of musical product sell well as they are so well marketted and as the emphasis is on this but selling and money isn't really why music exists.
The biggest problem with a label is not selling out your creative spirit in order to sell more and become "larger" for me. Capitalists would take the opposite view though. "Sell sell sell" hype it up and make it seem like your a massive label but that gets no one anywhere really in the end to my mind as musics about energy and vision and not about commercial success really.
The problem is how you remain free in this capitalist mechanism and the music market place to reflect truely creative and free works of art but also make it sustainable. The difficulty is how you do this and make enough cash to survive but without starting to "sell out" and end up making chocolate box music (musical products) fixed in time and style and fashion.
10. But what about releasing music for the masses, the music that wasn't created with a money in mind but really with a heart?
Releasing music for the masses and mass market created from the heart is cool but most mass marketted music is generally molded and over produced "let's do this to sell this" music where material success and defined creative choices. If you can sit in a studio and make free creative works and not think about money or scene or fashion and style or be controlled by this and fear of "not fitting in" or selling and then sell a million, wonderfull I say. If you sold a million but through shaping and moulding a product to fit and sell well and if thoughts of money made you make certain choices creatively then money and fame is your muse and as a rule quite shallow music results. You can make pure creative works that sell a million... listen to Pink Floyd, etc... My remarks are really as I feel so many artists are scared to invent new musical styles and so tied to style and form and fashion through fear of not selling and not appealing to labels. Mass production is cool, especially if its works of love and beauty of inventivness and labels who do this, any some do I really applaud, in fact I try and get on them.
11. Could you list some of these "musical products" you're talking about?
Musical products like Britney Spears and "kiddies pop" created to sell high volumes and aimed at the largest market are one extreme example. We end up with musical products shaped for commercial reasons. Only.
Example wise I can't give any really... Most populist stuff suffers this with a few acceptions. Most stylised music also suffers it on some level... I guess for me music is about invention and some labels manage it well and some play safe and the same goes for artists, it's cool... It's all harmony or destructivity on some level and all adds to the mixing pot but there are for sure musical products and musical works of art and then there some music which is both. I like the 100% art myself, I also like making a living but who said you can't sell art? You can but most businessmen fear not selling so much they don't trust in the spirit of free creativity to sell the art. I have faith if it's got some substance in a creative sense it will find it's way into the world and to the right number of people.
12. Your music is abstract, so let's say for a moment you're into abstract phase... Tomorrow one big guy with the money and the power will knock at your door and after you open he will say: "I'm from the biggest label in the world. We have more money than you have ever seen in your entire life and we can popularize you. You can release ANYTHING you want but your releases will be at every market side by side with bread and ham, in TV, in radio, everywhere where the masses are". What would you say to him now when it's an abstraction and what would you say to him when he really knocks at your house tomorrow?
I would say cool whether now or then... I would insist on 100% control of art, image and music and say we have a deal. The label simply sells it and distributes what I create in image and form. I don't mind mass produced art if that art has spirit and soul and free creative expression, especially if it's created to share harmony but don't fully buy into hard selling or hard promotion of a music product (music which has been moulded to meet market place). I don't mind big labels with big men at the helm and big ideas of selling a million and smoking fat cigars, they remind me what dreams not to chase and I wouldn't mind dealing with them if the result was more CDs of harmonious music into the world. I would mind dealing with them if they took the music and turned it into "Ishq meets Elton John" or something or tried to force me to make creative decisions that they thought would lead to material success (and ultimately to creative death).
13. What about classical music? This music was very popular in the past centuries and now is classified as art. Maybe all the pop music we have in media now, will be described as art in 300 years from now?
Well classical music was written without thoughts of selling CDs I guess or the composer getting on record labels. For a piece of music to last 300 years it needs something eternal in it I feel, something free from time and space (in an earthly sense). Something which feel a little more than just human. Classical music has this quality, you don't feel you're listening to a composer but to life itself. Maybe pop will in 300 years be described as art, or a good indication of just how narrow minded humanity had got.
14. Do you think running a label would be easier than you have found it?
I knew it would require a lot of work to sell small amounts and also require some selling and money materialist mentality (which I don't work for myself as a force). It's been about as easy or hard as I envisaged though maybe more time consuming? Time just disappears.
15. Does it take a lot of time doing Virtual art, covers, packaging and pressing, selling, etc.?
It can eat up a few days or weeks... It does take a lot of tweaking and learning.
16. Virtual releases have got a very unique covers. Who's the author of the covers and images in inlay and its whole conception?
I do all this, art/images/layout etc., and kind of make it up as I go along... It keep it simple... It's the spirit that's important and what it says and I am not graphic artist but I like them so that's cool. The photos are from everything: from old books to our own images and all sorts.
17. When you talked in our last interview about how the Ishq evolved you said that there was a list of a few names from which you chose Ishq. Are any of these other names connected now with Virtual? I mean Elve and Ishvara.
No - I binned all my old names apart from a few I may use in the future.
18. Who creates the titles for your albums and each track?
I do all that though I am inspired by names of paintings and books and all sorts or sources. The titles really do have a specific goal and mean a certain thing, some are abstract but felt to me like the energy of a track, some mean something. I deliberate a fair bit over titles.
19. The first track on "Magik Square Of The Sun" is a 21-minutes journey. Do you plan in the future on creating a CD as a journey where there will be only one, huge track?
Yes, we have one album "Timelapse In Mercury" (only an unfinished version on mp3 released to date) which has now been remixed/mastered and finished and that whilst an album is really one track. (Though I like to name even long tracks with sub sections which highlight the albums stages).
20. Will your new Ishq album be released on Virtual?
Possibly - next Ishq album when finished may be on one of the labels we work with or on ours but definately not as a Virtualworld series release.
21. So the new Ishq album, even if released on Virtual, won't be pressed in limited edition?
No - the bottom line is we will never limit Ishq and the releases if we can keep releasing the music.
22. What's the connection between Ishq and Virtual?
I suppose the obvious ones that I write all the music or a lot but musically there is a crossover... "Blue Haze" off the Dakini version of "Orchid" could easliy be a Virtual track. "Sky Blue" couldn't and neither could "Bhakti" as they are to "song structured" maybe... I guess the more innerspace and explorational it is the more it's a Virtual track. Ishq remains melodic and harmonic fairly knieve chillout music with some sense of style, Virtual releases are generally going to be more experimental and beatless.
23. Do you treat these two projects as two seperate things or like the one?
As two. Ishq I do for the love and for the heart more and with the idea of touching people there. Virtual I do for fun more and invention and as a way to explore more. Virtual's more for the head (though also the heart).
24. What do you think about re-releasing of your old work on Virtual or any other label? Your old ambient work that can't be bought by anyone now...
We are looking into this and taking all our music and CDs from 1990's onwards and making the whole back catalogue available in the future.
25. You're not a person who does many remixes. Why? Do you prefer to create something absolutely new?
Well I would love to do more remixes but I rarely get asked. I don't look for remix work or go looking for this and as I don't get offered much I generally don't do much.
26. One of the most intriguing things is that you said in our last interview that you are preparing a FTP space. What stage is this at? It'll be free for everyone?
It will be a free space where people can get stuff I don't feel fits on any physical album and where you will find the really weird stuff I do. Avantgarde music concrete and soundscapes and older stuff, also some writings I have been doing on music and magic and odds and ends will be uploaded there and an image library there aswell as a small sample library for other producers and synthesists. We're just sorting this out now this week. (smile)
27. What is the one thing that you wish to the world in 2008?
That people stop fighting over religion and follow the ethics of harmony and above all share. One world and humanity.
Author: Radoslaw Bialek
Date: 16th of December 2007
01. What's the official name of your label? I'm asking because we have different versions in different places. Virtual or Virtual Musical Reality? I know the answer but it would be good if you finally say in the official interview which version is good so in the future there won't be any mistakes on Discogs.com or other websites.
Virtual is the name - not Virtual Records or Virtual World. Simply Virtual.
02. How did Virtual come into existence?
Virtual was started up as I wanted a vehicle for the more obscure and experimental music I do and which we found other labels don't feel is quite commercial enough at times. It's a way for me to have some total creative freedom and retain some control over some aspects of my music and what I do also.
03. Why this name?
The name relates to music as a virtual reality in your head or music as a virtual space - innerspace, etc. Most music I writes for people to lay down to, close your eyes, put the headphones on maybe and trip inward into innerspace or your imaginations virtual world hence virtual. It's all about music and sound as a Virtual innerspace.
04. Did the idea come up for Virtual before or after the release of the first Ishq album? Why did you decide to create your own label?
I was planning on doing a label before we did "Orchid" and because we were getting no joy with labels and the stuff we were doing just didn't appeal to the other labels we approaced. It was decided: let's just press up the CDs and sell it ourselves, then somewhere along the way Ishq was born and took over for a while but we were still left feeling we needed our own label for some sense of total creative and financial freedom.
05. When will be the end of the first series of Virtual releases? There are 12 CDs in total but what's next?
Well it doesn't look like much is happening with Virtual but it is in terms of work... The first series has 2 albums out and we have 2 finished here today and going off to be pressed in January. After the first series we will do others no doubt and were probably going to run a second series of minimal soundscupture stuff at the same time. We've also started an album of upbeat stuff which will be released on Virtual form as another series maybe... There's lots planned and underway.
06. ...Maybe a new label with its new series with f.e. not white but green covers?
We're not sure... but I will probably follow a pattern style wise.
07. Do you have any other strategic plans for Virtual?
We have no master plan but are planning on stepping things up as we have very good distribution offers now and can afford to basically keep writing and releasing. My main focus is release the next 2 Virtual albums asap into 2008 and as much other material as possible.
08. Who is in your label team and what does each member do?
Well I do most music but have music in progress written with Jake Stephenson from Optic Eye and Michael Martin from Indidginus, and Jacqueline who does the vocals for a lot of the Ishq music has also been writing an album and she takes care of all the office side of things. It's mainly me and Jacqueline but I hope to work with more people musically over time.
09. What's the biggest problems when running a label?
The biggest problem is selling enough music to survive but without ending up releasing bland "products" or making music with money in mind first. The hard thing is getting a balance as a label as it's so easy to begin to shape music for commerciality at the expense of spirit. Painting by numbers type music results where the label/business dominates the create process of takes to much control. Good products result with very little real creative substance or sense of freedom. We listen to music to feel free... You don't feel free from many "musical products". You feel there's to much emphasis on marketting and "sell sell sell" mentality. For me that stains the music and free spirit of art and creation. These forms of musical product sell well as they are so well marketted and as the emphasis is on this but selling and money isn't really why music exists.
The biggest problem with a label is not selling out your creative spirit in order to sell more and become "larger" for me. Capitalists would take the opposite view though. "Sell sell sell" hype it up and make it seem like your a massive label but that gets no one anywhere really in the end to my mind as musics about energy and vision and not about commercial success really.
The problem is how you remain free in this capitalist mechanism and the music market place to reflect truely creative and free works of art but also make it sustainable. The difficulty is how you do this and make enough cash to survive but without starting to "sell out" and end up making chocolate box music (musical products) fixed in time and style and fashion.
10. But what about releasing music for the masses, the music that wasn't created with a money in mind but really with a heart?
Releasing music for the masses and mass market created from the heart is cool but most mass marketted music is generally molded and over produced "let's do this to sell this" music where material success and defined creative choices. If you can sit in a studio and make free creative works and not think about money or scene or fashion and style or be controlled by this and fear of "not fitting in" or selling and then sell a million, wonderfull I say. If you sold a million but through shaping and moulding a product to fit and sell well and if thoughts of money made you make certain choices creatively then money and fame is your muse and as a rule quite shallow music results. You can make pure creative works that sell a million... listen to Pink Floyd, etc... My remarks are really as I feel so many artists are scared to invent new musical styles and so tied to style and form and fashion through fear of not selling and not appealing to labels. Mass production is cool, especially if its works of love and beauty of inventivness and labels who do this, any some do I really applaud, in fact I try and get on them.
11. Could you list some of these "musical products" you're talking about?
Musical products like Britney Spears and "kiddies pop" created to sell high volumes and aimed at the largest market are one extreme example. We end up with musical products shaped for commercial reasons. Only.
Example wise I can't give any really... Most populist stuff suffers this with a few acceptions. Most stylised music also suffers it on some level... I guess for me music is about invention and some labels manage it well and some play safe and the same goes for artists, it's cool... It's all harmony or destructivity on some level and all adds to the mixing pot but there are for sure musical products and musical works of art and then there some music which is both. I like the 100% art myself, I also like making a living but who said you can't sell art? You can but most businessmen fear not selling so much they don't trust in the spirit of free creativity to sell the art. I have faith if it's got some substance in a creative sense it will find it's way into the world and to the right number of people.
12. Your music is abstract, so let's say for a moment you're into abstract phase... Tomorrow one big guy with the money and the power will knock at your door and after you open he will say: "I'm from the biggest label in the world. We have more money than you have ever seen in your entire life and we can popularize you. You can release ANYTHING you want but your releases will be at every market side by side with bread and ham, in TV, in radio, everywhere where the masses are". What would you say to him now when it's an abstraction and what would you say to him when he really knocks at your house tomorrow?
I would say cool whether now or then... I would insist on 100% control of art, image and music and say we have a deal. The label simply sells it and distributes what I create in image and form. I don't mind mass produced art if that art has spirit and soul and free creative expression, especially if it's created to share harmony but don't fully buy into hard selling or hard promotion of a music product (music which has been moulded to meet market place). I don't mind big labels with big men at the helm and big ideas of selling a million and smoking fat cigars, they remind me what dreams not to chase and I wouldn't mind dealing with them if the result was more CDs of harmonious music into the world. I would mind dealing with them if they took the music and turned it into "Ishq meets Elton John" or something or tried to force me to make creative decisions that they thought would lead to material success (and ultimately to creative death).
13. What about classical music? This music was very popular in the past centuries and now is classified as art. Maybe all the pop music we have in media now, will be described as art in 300 years from now?
Well classical music was written without thoughts of selling CDs I guess or the composer getting on record labels. For a piece of music to last 300 years it needs something eternal in it I feel, something free from time and space (in an earthly sense). Something which feel a little more than just human. Classical music has this quality, you don't feel you're listening to a composer but to life itself. Maybe pop will in 300 years be described as art, or a good indication of just how narrow minded humanity had got.
14. Do you think running a label would be easier than you have found it?
I knew it would require a lot of work to sell small amounts and also require some selling and money materialist mentality (which I don't work for myself as a force). It's been about as easy or hard as I envisaged though maybe more time consuming? Time just disappears.
15. Does it take a lot of time doing Virtual art, covers, packaging and pressing, selling, etc.?
It can eat up a few days or weeks... It does take a lot of tweaking and learning.
16. Virtual releases have got a very unique covers. Who's the author of the covers and images in inlay and its whole conception?
I do all this, art/images/layout etc., and kind of make it up as I go along... It keep it simple... It's the spirit that's important and what it says and I am not graphic artist but I like them so that's cool. The photos are from everything: from old books to our own images and all sorts.
17. When you talked in our last interview about how the Ishq evolved you said that there was a list of a few names from which you chose Ishq. Are any of these other names connected now with Virtual? I mean Elve and Ishvara.
No - I binned all my old names apart from a few I may use in the future.
18. Who creates the titles for your albums and each track?
I do all that though I am inspired by names of paintings and books and all sorts or sources. The titles really do have a specific goal and mean a certain thing, some are abstract but felt to me like the energy of a track, some mean something. I deliberate a fair bit over titles.
19. The first track on "Magik Square Of The Sun" is a 21-minutes journey. Do you plan in the future on creating a CD as a journey where there will be only one, huge track?
Yes, we have one album "Timelapse In Mercury" (only an unfinished version on mp3 released to date) which has now been remixed/mastered and finished and that whilst an album is really one track. (Though I like to name even long tracks with sub sections which highlight the albums stages).
20. Will your new Ishq album be released on Virtual?
Possibly - next Ishq album when finished may be on one of the labels we work with or on ours but definately not as a Virtualworld series release.
21. So the new Ishq album, even if released on Virtual, won't be pressed in limited edition?
No - the bottom line is we will never limit Ishq and the releases if we can keep releasing the music.
22. What's the connection between Ishq and Virtual?
I suppose the obvious ones that I write all the music or a lot but musically there is a crossover... "Blue Haze" off the Dakini version of "Orchid" could easliy be a Virtual track. "Sky Blue" couldn't and neither could "Bhakti" as they are to "song structured" maybe... I guess the more innerspace and explorational it is the more it's a Virtual track. Ishq remains melodic and harmonic fairly knieve chillout music with some sense of style, Virtual releases are generally going to be more experimental and beatless.
23. Do you treat these two projects as two seperate things or like the one?
As two. Ishq I do for the love and for the heart more and with the idea of touching people there. Virtual I do for fun more and invention and as a way to explore more. Virtual's more for the head (though also the heart).
24. What do you think about re-releasing of your old work on Virtual or any other label? Your old ambient work that can't be bought by anyone now...
We are looking into this and taking all our music and CDs from 1990's onwards and making the whole back catalogue available in the future.
25. You're not a person who does many remixes. Why? Do you prefer to create something absolutely new?
Well I would love to do more remixes but I rarely get asked. I don't look for remix work or go looking for this and as I don't get offered much I generally don't do much.
26. One of the most intriguing things is that you said in our last interview that you are preparing a FTP space. What stage is this at? It'll be free for everyone?
It will be a free space where people can get stuff I don't feel fits on any physical album and where you will find the really weird stuff I do. Avantgarde music concrete and soundscapes and older stuff, also some writings I have been doing on music and magic and odds and ends will be uploaded there and an image library there aswell as a small sample library for other producers and synthesists. We're just sorting this out now this week. (smile)
27. What is the one thing that you wish to the world in 2008?
That people stop fighting over religion and follow the ethics of harmony and above all share. One world and humanity.
