In 2016, Current Value, birth name Tim Elliott, was knocking out one massive single after another. He was featured on Noisia radio so many times, in fact, that if he’d put every CV clip from Noisia Radio on his own Soundcloud, there would have been little else there. In 2017, however, CV seemed to go a bit quiet, at least from a U.S. perspective. He did play shows in Los Angeles (Respect) and Washington DC in June, but aside from that U.S. audiences were where the neurunk powerhouse had gone.
When Broken Toys, a massive LP on Noisia’s Invisible Recordings, released in late 2017 it sort made sense, but in fact Current Value was up to more than just producing a huge album. Those in the know will have seen clips from the CVAV multimedia show on Facebook and Twitter, but unless you were one the lucky EU festivalgoers to have caught it in either its test runs or at the larger tour at the end the year, it’s tough tog et the full experience. CVAV is not like a normal multimedia show and likely no one can explain it as well as Current Value himself. With CVAV about to finally come to America, Your EDM caught up with the very busy producer to find out a little more about what makes this show so unique and exciting, and what U.S. audiences can expect.
I’ve been creating music pretty extensively for many years now, and have found different points inspiration during that time that have evolved my sound really. But the constant is that I’ve always tried to create an audio world that paints a vision and is very much rooted in a future tech aesthetic. Working with Greenaway & Greenaway (who manifested the visual aspect) to create the CVAV show was inspired by a desire to realise that world and take what’s being expressed to a new immersive depth. The CVAV concept also enables me to represent a broader cross section my sonic journey to date.
The process coming up with the initial set visuals took about a year, there wasn’t too much back and forth because the pressionalism the Greenaway brothers and their vision which matches perfectly with my own. The result is that we have about 2 hours material that we can approach each 60 minute performance with. As it’s not a one-f tour, and is an ongoing artistic project, new material is already in development as we plan to continually evolve the show.
So to put it shortly, the CVAV project allows me to explore a much broader landscape in a unique way, whereas my DJ sets tend to be very much focused on new material and also a different style mixing and combining those tracks.
That was through my management at MethLab Agency, they were acquainted with the work G & G and thought it might be a good fit when I presented them my idea making such a project.
It all seemed quite ideal for the videos to be worked into my CV setup using Lemur and Ableton Live. With each building/testing session new ideas came up. And it keeps building.
In a CVAV set the video content is being controlled midi. Both direct midi triggers or controllers as well as stuff that gets controlled through audio – to – midi which really glues audio and video together strongly and gives us both flexibility in performing and really instantaneous feedback visually as I affect the audio.
Most that is taken care in the setup by my accompanying technician, who manages a few things that aren’t directly controllable with my set up and ensures smooth transitions. He’s there to make sure video content is mixed properly or react in an emergency case.
Yes, we’re looking at tour date proposals for April and also the summer at the moment.
The show consists mostly material made in 2017. Many the visuals are dedicated to a large selection what became the album in the end with each video targeting one particular track, but there’s plenty as yet unreleased content in the current show also. At the moment it contains mostly unreleased material along with material from my Deadly Toys LP.
Well, in 2017 I delved into the realms Jump Up a little and “Deadly Toys,” according to Noisia, seemed the most important tune when discussing the invisible album. So it naturally developed into an album being inspired from that genre but still representing a vast variety my latest work stylistically.
Definitely yes. There is so incredibly much to develop, fine-tune, add, change – it never stops. No show is like another – not only because the new material rolling in. Extending the concept to reach deeper into my back catalog to re-imagine some the tracks I’m best known for and put them alongside unique fresh material that will only be listenable in a live context and likely go unreleased to keep it special is also exciting for me.
The future direction the audio side is going to involve new material that may never be released and will only be experienced live, as well as reaching into the past – I’m selecting some my past tracks such as “Symptomless Coma” remix, “Hitman,” some the work I did in remixing Bjork, remastering these and bringing these favorites to life with new visual conceptions.
Deadly Toys is out now and available on . It can also be purchased on or streamed on and . CVAV’s next stops will be at Rampage and the Let it Roll Winter Festivals.
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