TW #31 — Faces in the Crowd: Interview with Vicious (Master of Darkness)

Master of Darkness interviews vicious, founder of the Toronto dance group V.S.L. (FITC "Interview #11", conducted 1995-10-18). The centre of the piece is a house producer's case that sample ripping is simply how dance music works.

Key claims#

• Vicious (printed contact mike.kameka@realm.tor250.org) founded V.S.L. — "Variety's the Spice of Life" — a Toronto dance group active since about April 1995; 14 members and growing daily, veterans pariah, E and d.j. XL; "only 4-5 of us make commercial quality tracks". Variety means dance styles, "from euro dance to hard core hip-hop" — no demo composers, ever.
• His own base is house: "not that commercial crap people call house but the true underground house sound. Simple, repetitious, but you can dance yer ass off to it"; an all-house disk was in progress. He respects demo music ("much harder to create than dance") but his goal is a record deal, and "demo music won't get me a record deal".
• History: composing about a year; started in MAZURkA, who "let me go because they said I was holding the group back"; then DDT, a Toronto group that folded; then founded VSL — at first "28 mine and 2 from the other 2 members". Also a member of Aim Higher for less commercial, mellow pieces and "a couple demo tracks in the works". Inspired to start by Moby of Anasthasia, who told him "Why don't you give it a try".
• On ripping: "Did the original sampler of the sample not steal it from a keyboard? Do you think Korg or Roland would be happy…"; "House music was born from stealing" — disco records redone with a faster digital beat; "Take it as a compliment when someone 'borrows' one of yer samples." Originality is the key — use a popular sample in a unique way.
• Mdark's position in reply: credit the sample's owner when possible; using a very recognisable sample "in the EXACT SAME FASHION" (his example: skaven's "BLAST" in the Second Reality song) is wrong; otherwise "WHO REALLY CARES" — some people "JUST DON'T have the ability to sample our own sounds". He also observes that ripped samples "always (unexplainably) lose some fine-tuning and quality".
• Equipment: his GUS ACE "can't sample, it has no recording abilities", so he buys sample CDs; "I prefer 16 bit 44khz samples. They're much cleaner."
• Composes for himself — "I'm my biggest fan"; the Toronto response was good (someone offered to pay for a high-quality cassette of the disk); promises not to leave the PC scene if he goes commercial. Advice: "DON'T give up on yer dreams."
• Mdark, on downloading everything for the FITC reviews: "Just because you are on #trax doesn't mean you are the only musician in the world who is good."
• Releases: prefix V-, mostly XM, under /demos/incoming/music/songs/xm/ on ftp.cdrom.com, plus the vsl-dj disks. Listed: "Witch Doktor: Moveit Mix" (V-DOKTOR1), "Witch Doktor: YourBody Mix" (V-DOKTOR2), "Tonight - Lyric Test" (V-TNIGHT), "Breaking Free" (V-BREAK, S3M), "Can You Feel My Love" (V-CANYOU), "At The Break Of Dawn" (V-DAWN), "Day Dreaming" (V-DREAM), "Escape from Ya Brain" (V-ESCAPE), "Da Euro-Grooves" (V-EURO). The FITC song-reviews box in the same issue recommends his "Tranquility Within" (v-trnqil.zip, XM, "Dance/Ambient", released 1995-08-07).

Practical takeaways#

• The dance-scene view of sample-ripping: everything is borrowed, so originality lives in the use, not the source; credit when you can; do not reuse a signature sample the same way.
• Buy sample CDs at 16-bit 44 kHz when the card cannot record (see recording-samples).

Notable quotes#

• "House music was born from stealing." — Vicious.
• "Take it as a compliment when someone 'borrows' one of yer samples. It must have been pretty good if it's worth stealing." — Vicious.

Relevance#

The pro-ripping pole of the 1995 debate (s-tw024-sample-ripping-debate), argued from house-music practice; a picture of a 14-member Toronto dance group and its V- release scheme; one of the earliest "I want a record deal" voices for commercial-tracking.

Pages touched#

vicious, sample-ripping, gravis-ultrasound, commercial-tracking, recording-samples, skaven, deus-ex, tracker-scene-history, master-of-darkness, pariah.