Just a Vad

Vadim has been kicking up a euphoric party across the globe on a schedule that would make most cry with exhaustion, in support of his new solo album, Sound Catcher.

"I am the Soundcatcher, it's a word that describes me so well in terms of making music, catching different sounds from funk, blues, hip-hop or whatever," he tells us. "I'm always looking for new bands' sounds and rhythms." The Sound Catcher LP jumps in this way, from seemingly disparate sound to disparate sound. Vadim explains his love of the way that hip-hop developed allowing him to do this. "Nowadays there isn't an identifiable sound that is hip-hop as it's such an amalgamation of so many things. It's the first music created just from sampling other people's music," he says. "I like to think that I'm trying to make music that's different, trying to challenge people and to bring different things together."

For this new album, he pulled together tracks from the last four years that did not end up with Oneself or other projects, which they might have been initially intended for. "The Sound Catcher is pretty much a diary of what I've been up to," he explains. "The Sound Catcher is the concept, but it's not a concept album, even though people describe me as a conceptual producer simply because I don't sell five million albums." As a compulsive consumer of all kinds of music, Vadim waxes passionately about the ways in which people consume and enjoy music: "Think about how far music has come in 100 years. Think about what people were listening to 100 years ago. What would their choices be?" he asks. "Then think about the diversity in music now, maybe music has become too diverse and will eventually implode."
Although aware of the threats to a musician's income imposed by modern technology, Vadim is also very aware of the possibilities of reaching people who couldn't otherwise hear his music. "There is a whole culture of people who are not used to paying for music, and for me working as an artist that means half my earnings are going straight down the drain. But the number of shows I am doing is up, and the number of people attending those shows is up," he says.

"We are living in very fast paced times and I know the way people consume music is going to be totally different in five years, if not sooner. The user friendliness of mp3 is much greater, it's power to the consumer. If I go into any record store looking for music I'm going to get some spotty 17 year-old who doesn't know shit about shit, apart from their favourite band. People will not be buying CDs in five year's time, I'll eat my hat if they are."

Vadim also muses on the fact that with the extended choices offered by new technologies, most people are lulled into apathy, unable to choose new music for themselves. "We're becoming more programmed than ever before. We're groomed into a life from birth," he observes. "Knowing where you live and the income of your parents, you could plot your life to death and that's kind of crazy. Even though we live in this supposed democracy with all this supposed freedom, the actual things that people are choosing are becoming less and less and less. We definitely take the freedom we have for granted and we don't use the tools that have been given to us, which are fantastic tools."