Of the Audacious Vinnie LaDuce, little is known. Not his place of birth, the happiness or sadness of his childhood, how gracefully or otherwise he transitioned into adulthood, nor much even of what artistically came before – having chosen to work under many a different disguise. Perhaps there is a darkness deep in the past of Vinnie LaDuce, motivating him to this quest of living a hedonistic life or perhaps he’s merely a man wholly committed to the present.  An existentialist.
 


Assumptions and presumptions abound in the sphere of Vinnie LaDuce but there are some definites…and they are distinct. He appreciates fine tailoring; even with his boots in the sand, the waves lapping at his heels, he can still be seen in his trim pressed lapels. The shadow from his flat, wide-brimmed hat preventing the onlooker from seeing the sparkle in his eyes, only the slight, well-informed smile at the corner of lips from where few words pass - giving away the quiet excitement within Vinnie LaDuce for the stories that unfold after dark.



Film maker, male model and creator of nasty beats for the bedroom and d-floor, legend has it that LaDuce spent several years, roaming and performing in the bass heavy clubs in the East End of London before his relocation to Byron Bay, Australia, where the cocktails and the summers never end. He writes synthematic, bass heavy, secret pop songs.

Underneath avante garde beat-building and dizzy-ingly affected vocals is vulnerable songwriting with a love affair of the now.
 
Vinnie LaDuce is class and enigma. There is no need for second-guessing. No concern for nostalgia. No calculations. He is the gent who will lead you to good times in the evening and to the best coffee in town in the morning. He will buy you that coffee and then thank you for enjoying it with him. Vinnie LaDuce is all things attractive about a never-ending good-time…where no-one gets hurt and there is no such thing as a hangover. To quote a lyric from the album “stick with me for a smile, smile with me like a child.” VL 2014.
 
“VL embodies his music in person: fun, energetic, intelligent and awesome.” ––Mikey Bee//MT WARNING

Josh and I first discussed his idea over a cold beer on the side of a road not far from the slow Friday afternoon traffic of Byron Bay central. He talked me through his line drawing process which I instantly loved for several reasons.

1. Although there were boundary conditions they were not premeditated. i.e. he had no idea what the finished drawing would look like when he started. Each moment depended on the moment before.
2. They were deceptively simple, but relied on his years of previous practice and research
3. The ultimate contrast of black and white means every part of the finished piece makes a statement
4. They did not take very long to complete (I am an impatient artist)
5. Most importantly the pieces gave me great pleasure when i viewed them (not to mention watching the videos of their creation)

So when he told me over the phone that he had an idea to discuss that involved my music i was chuffed. we kicked around a few concepts of the similarities between the creation of music and the creation of his drawings and I espoused my thoughts on how the drawings were reminiscent of waves and wave theory which is an integral part of sound recordings and sound reproduction. The physics behind waves in the ocean and ones ability to listen to Cardi B while being caught in slow Friday afternoon traffic are surprisingly similar. I went on a nerdy rant that I'm sure wasn't as interesting to Josh as it was for me but we were both buoyed by our mutual enthusiasm for some kind of dynamic collaboration. his drawing techniques inspiring my recording techniques which would then result in two seperate but interrelated pieces of art.

Now I'm alone in my studio, sitting at my 1979 Rhodes electric piano ready to record. Record something. Josh starts with one basically straight line. What is that like in music? What could the starting point be to inspire everything else that followed. Then I realised. Our processes are essentially reversed. Necessarily. The straight line represents either silence or white noise. Neither of which inspires a second move. My first brush stroke had to be like the ultimate last brush stoke in one of Josh’s drawings. Josh accentuates each peak to create a beautiful final image but music has to be complimentary (traditionally) to create a pleasing final result. Imagine an orchestra where every instrument played the same note at the same time in a seated fashion but each time the note played by each instrument were to become louder and louder. A valid experiment but I would not like to go to that concerto.

So here is how I created 'Rhodes Lines' and why each condition is related to meditations.

1. One instrument  (Rhodes = pen)
2. A recording of a few seconds superimposed on a recording of exactly the same length and so on (paper width is the same for each line that sits atop the previous line)
3. Each recording is spontaneous and inspired by the sounds previously recorded (each line necessarily inspired by the previous line as well as every line that came before)
4. Each recording is complimentary to rather than an accentuation of that which inspired it
5. The number of recordings (layers) should be similar to the number of lines in Josh’s drawings

Condition 4 is where our art is reversed. imagine if Josh’s drawing was 10 times (or 100 times) higher. i.e. lines continued to be added and added but the width of the drawing remained the same. The peaks would become wider and wider and last line of the drawing would contain just one peak or trough as followed from edge to edge. This is the starting point of the music. Three simple peaks in a recording of around 8 seconds. As the layers of music build, each recording compliments the previous by adding something in a part of the recording that was previously silence (a trough). If we follow this technique to its ultimate conclusion, in sound theory, we get a recording with no troughs and no discernible dynamics which is essentially white noise. and if we draw it as a visual sound wave it is just a straight block. similar to the starting point in Josh’s drawings. 

Vinnie LaDuce - Engraved Brass