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Born in Russia but raised in England, Vadim became enamored of American hip-hop as a child, sopping up each new release by the Sugar Hill Gang and Run-DMC in rap's early period. His tastes became more refined, and on his first recordings, Vadim uses hip-hop's history as a sort of marinade for his own music. His first two full-length releases of note are USSR Repertoire on Montreal's Ninja Tune label and an album issued on Vadim's Jazz Fudge imprint under the pseudonym Andre Gurov, A New Rap Language, which reprises the title of a 1980 Schooly D record. Vadim is clearly passionate about his records and about music in general, and he offers eloquent commentary about the state of today's hip-hop. "Two different scenes have developed," he says from his home in London. "One is hip-hop, and one is a commercial form of pop music. What's different now than at the beginning of the decade is that back then we had people like MC Hammer and Vanilla Ice and Young MC, who were the biggest rappers around, and they never claimed to be representative of hip-hop. Now, people like Puff Daddy are in the same situation, yet he claims to represent hip-hop. It's the same music, but it's packaged differently." Anything but commercial, Vadim is part of a thriving underground movement that treats the turntable as an instrument and has spawned hotbeds of activity in cities as far afield as London, Montreal, San Francisco, New York and Tokyo. He's currently on tour with some of his Ninja Tune labelmates, many of whom share his affinity for breakbeats merged with samples and electronic sounds. On Vadim's own records, he focuses on deep, rumbling beats and introduces other sonic elements--like sampled sitars, guest MCs or swirling synthesizers--to steer the mood of each composition. The effect can be chilling, uplifting or kitschy, and his arsenal of atmospheres springs from his talents on the turntable. "One of the things I'm trying to do," he says determinedly, "is to combine turntablism, scratching, rapping, spoken word and instrumental tracks. I don't see myself as an advocate of this style or that style. I'm interested in doing my own thing, creating my own style." Like Davis, Calif.'s DJ Shadow, who pricked up ears with his jazz- and rock-influenced 1996 album Endtroducing, Vadim crafts each composition with the intense concentration of a bridge welder. Twinkling keyboards team with sultry horns, multilingual orators break through radio static, New York City MCs pop up and disappear--it's all part of an experimental hip-hop that sounds like what would have happened if Prince Paul were an avid reader of Dostoevsky. According to Vadim, the various EPs, singles and full-lengths are only the opening chapters in his oeuvre. "What I'm trying to do is maybe not as direct as KRS-One, with his views of hip-hop," he says, mentioning an innovator who has championed the medium as an educational tool. "I'm bringing together lots of influences. When you look at my music, it's like looking at a jigsaw puzzle. At the moment, there's only two or three pieces there, and the picture isn't clear. Hopefully, when the [future] albums come out, people will see a much clearer picture." One image already in focus is Vadim's commitment to exploring hip-hop as a revolutionary art form. On the liner notes to USSR, he includes a mini-manifesto and quotes the early 20th-century Italian futurist composer Luigi Russolo: "We must break, at all cost, the restrictive circle of pure sound and conquer the infinite variety of noise sounds." Vadim credits underground peers like the Bay Area's four-man DJ team Invisibl Skratch Piklz as contributing to this musical progression. "The Skratch Piklz are some other shit. They've legitimized the sense of using the turntable as an instrument. It's no longer a means of just playing records," Vadim says, then asks rhetorically: "Can't you use it the same way Jimi Hendrix used his guitar?" Vadim sees team efforts like the Skratch Piklz as an exciting direction for hip-hop and popular music in general. He says that Krush, with whom he played some two-man shows in Japan last year, would like to organize a 10- or 20-man "worldwide turntable orchestra." "Where you come together as a team, that's where you can truly create music," he says. "I look at Ramsey Lewis as a solo pianist, but it's when he came together with other musicians that he created great music. Sooner or later, we'll see a rock band as four scratch DJs, a guitarist and a vocalist. There might not even be a guitarist. It'll be fascinating to see what happens in the next few years." |
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