Talking Shop
Tom VR
Over the past five years, Tom VR has issued a series of releases across labels like All My Thoughts and Inter-Graded, all the while developing his own imprint, Valby Rotary. His latest full-length project is his most ambitious yet, transmuting the aesthetic he’s explored on earlier records into a 10-track statement that permeates the rhythmic frameworks of house music, trip-hop and DnB with colour, texture and vivid emotion.
How and when did you first get into making music?
“I started making music in high school at about 14. They had this software for writing musical notation, and I’d spend my breaks messing around with it in the library. I had no idea how to actually read music, but I just did everything by ear and process of elimination really. A friend in the same class used to make dubstep and taught me how to download FL Studio, which was basically the moment everything began.”