Visionary Underground

THIS IS THE FIRST FULL-LENGTH ALBUM YOU'VE RELEASED, TELL ME, WHAT'S LED UP TO IT - SINGLES, TOURING ETC...?

Prior to the release of KEEP THE GRIME ON, our debut album (available to buy from the VU site... sorry had to get that in... Ha Ha!), VU Recordings (which is our own label) have released four 12" vinyl singles and one CD single: Feeling Good, Urban Uproar, Countries At War, and Eye of the Storm. Other tracks like Militant 24, Freedom, Ektaa and Sonic Solution have gone out on various compilation albums (i.e. FabricLive15) and Militant 24 was also used as title music in the UK (south) Asian arts and culture programme "Desi DNA" whilst Eye Of The Storm was picked up and played by MTV's Party Hard and various other outer perimeter video channels. Remix work includes Nitin Sawhney's "Falling" (also known as "Lately") and Asian Dub Foundation's "1000 Mirrors" ft Sinead O'Connor. Since our conception a few years back we have given away and still do many mp3 downloads from the VU site. It's a nice way of introducing people to our sound and also gives something back to all those that have been supporting us. Also of course we have done some gigging around the UK, Europe and US.

The word visionary is associated with innovation and that is what we are trying to do, and we are in the underground because that's where our roots are and the roots of all good, innovative, forward thinking music and art.

HAS THE FACT THAT YOU GUYS HAVE BEEN PERFORMING AND MAKING MUSIC WITHOUT AN OFFICIAL DEBUT UP UNTIL THIS POINT KEPT YOU IN THE 'UNDERGROUND?

No. With or without an album / albums out there, and whether or not we have "overground" success, we will always be "underground", because the underground has/is a certain attitude and outlook. Making a living from what you love doing is the best job in the world and performing, being creative and making music is what it's all about for us, as is getting our message of consciousness over in our own way. We are not a "commercial" outfit, although that doesn't mean we couldn't appeal to the mainstream. Releasing any album is one of the time-honoured ways to make people aware of you and your work at any given time. Importantly fans can collect and keep VU's work for themselves.

ELECTRONIC MUSIC IN THE UK IS COMMONPLACE AND, AS COMPARED TO NORTH AMERICA, YOU CAN HEAR IT ON THE FM DIAL 24/7. WHERE DO BREAKS AND DRUM'B'BASS COME IN - IS IT STILL THE MUSIC OF 'UNDERGROUND' SCENES?

It is a sound that's crossed over to some degree as you hear the different influences appear on TV ads and programme/film soundtracks for instance but in the main it's still predominantly an underground sound in it's purest form. The fusion stuff is definitely still very underground and played only in certain clubs on particular nights and specialist radio shows.

TELL ME ABOUT THE SOUTH ASIAN INFLUENCE IN YOUR MUSIC.

We are fortunate enough to be surrounded by many different, wonderful musicians like Dr Das (bass player-ADF), Pandit Dinesh (tabla and percussion guru), Chandru (Bollywood Strings), Aref Durvesh (tabla) and Sonia Mehta (Indian vocals) to name but a few and it has been a natural progression to incorporate these influences into our music. There are no samples on the album as everyone was recorded in live and urged to stamp/contribute their own particular flavour which was then taken and produced by DJ FeelFree to fit VU's sound. For the next album we plan on having the likes of Sheema Mukherjee from Transglobal Underground to come in and guest for a sitar orientated track. Also many of our old friends from the Keep The Grime On album will feature again second time round.

HAVE YOU TAKEN YOUR SOUND TO SOUTH ASIA? WHERE ELSE IN THE WORLD HAS THE VU CREW TRAVELLED? WHAT HAVE RESPONSES TO YOUR MUSIC BEEN LIKE?

As of yet we haven't traveled to South Asia but we have certain guys like Bandish Projekt, DJ Nasha and Chemi-kaal playing our stuff out in Bombay and Delhi. We definitely plan on hooking something up out there but it's hard to say when that will be. In the last twelve months we have performed in New York, San Francisco, Poland, Germany, Dubai and the UK. The response has been great and something that we are going to continue to build on as we return to a lot of these places once again next year. Also our website is being hit by around 70-80 different countries and album sales certainly reflect the many different places that we are reaching. The internet has played a huge part in attributing to all this and we enjoy embracing and utilizing the technology that's available.

HOW HAS WORKING WITH SO MANY GREAT COLLABORATORS (INCLUDING THE LATE-80S/EARLY90S VOCAL ICON AND SELF-TOUTED WORLDS-FASTEST-RAPPER DADDY FREDDY), AFFECTED YOUR SOUND?

Over the years the VU sound has developed and taken on different styles of breakbeat and drum n bass that incorporate the talents of many different artists and musicians. This came about organically as we collaborated with friends then friends of friends as in the case of Daddy Freddy who was introduced to us by MC Navigator. (Navi in fact bought quite a few of his MC and ragga colleagues to us.) Having so many different artists most of whom are established in their own right gave us the opportunity to showcase lots of different styles and flavours (electro, dub, asian, ragga, soul, hip hop etc. etc.) both vocally and instrumentally but all under the breakbeat, drum n bass banner. We love the diversity working like this has bought to our first album.

YOU USE VIDEO JOCKEYING IN YOUR LIVE PERFORMANCES - WHAT KIND OF IMAGERY DO YOU THINK REFLECTS MESSAGES IN YOUR MUSIC AND HOW INTEGRAL HAVE VISUALS BECOME IN A VISIONARY UNDERGROUND PERFORMANCE?

I [Coco] like to add to the overall conscious element that we as VU like to promote and the visuals are a completely integrated interactive part of the live performance. I have specific pieces for some tracks and lots of pre-made material but my delivery is always on the fly and spontaneous as I trigger visual loops from my two laptops and mix them up with live footage according to the music I'm hearing. My specialty is beat matching visuals and I go from all kinds of abstract footage and word/picture graphic loops to film loops depending on the nature of the audio. I also make lyric sequences from some of the tracks and my software enables me to throw up words as quickly as I can type them in which allows me at times to follow the singer/MC and re-iterate what he/she is saying onto the screen. No two performances are ever exactly the same...

WHERE CAN PEOPLE EXPECT TO SEE THE VU CREW LIVE IN THE NEXT FEW MONTHS?

Lots of things are getting lined up for next year at the moment. Some dates in the US, hopefully another Polish tour plus loads of dates around Europe and the UK. Stayed tuned to visionaryunderground.com for details and updates regarding all that.

TO CLOSE, WHAT DO YOU THINK MUSIC IS?

A beautiful thing... ENJOY / ADORE / FEEL FREE...!!!

More info:
http://www.visionaryunderground.com