10 YEARSOF THE UNDERGROUND
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Hello, and welcome.
Thank you so much for being here with us, all our friends, old and new. We've shared quite a history together. So many memories, so many people coming and going, and here we still are.
Here you'll find some of the earliest histories of the VILL4IN project.
It's been quite a journey.
VILL4IN was officially established in October 2016, originally under the name "Villain Records." We're happy to have had you personally along for the ride.
Enjoy…
EARLY BEGINNINGS
In the early days, GH0ST (originally known as JP) and I (C1PH3R) dove headfirst into the world of techno. 2016 felt like another golden age for the genre, a real resurgence, and we were both deep in that wave, so we decided to chase it with a label of our own.
GH0ST and I went back a long way. We met in a high-school guitar class when I was around fifteen, and we clicked over music straight away. We came up on drum & bass like Aphrodite, IDM like Aphex Twin, and lounge like Zero 7 and Thievery Corporation, though to be fair we always leaned a little harder into the lounge side. That class was the start of it, and the rest was history.
It wasn't my first run at making a label. Years earlier I'd already released as an artist and run labels: Eleventh Sun, a neurofunk drum & bass act I built with my brother Boris (who you may know as Project Lazarus), and Darkness Hides, a small digital drum & bass label.
Our first real project, C1PH3R — TH30RY, was carefully planned, with hopes of making a splash in the techno scene. We tried everything to get eyes on the label: we even printed "glitch"-style images with our website link and scattered them across the city. Despite our best efforts we sold about fifteen copies, nowhere near the production costs. We were still very much underground, trying to make our mark.
SIDE A ・ 表
- TH30RY
SIDE B ・ 裏
- EQU1L1BR1UM
After the vinyl, we shifted to radio podcasts on SoundCloud, thirty episodes in all, spanning genres and communities. Each one ran an hour or two, released like clockwork every Friday: a digital track of the week, a vinyl track of the week, and a full guest DJ set. Those broadcasts became how we finally understood the underground was important.
- EP01 Project Lazarus
- EP02 JP
- EP03 David Leoni
- EP04 Jocan Deka
- EP05 DJ Morreel
- EP06 Alex G
- EP07 Mike Haddad
- EP08 MATTR
- EP09 Practice
- EP10 Ismet
- EP11 DJ Jac J
- EP12 Omor
- EP13 LPP
- EP14 Joseph Nakouzi
- EP15 Astraer
- EP16 JP
- EP17 Indieveed
- EP18 William Welt
- EP19 Dan Sherman
- EP20 Mr Phoenix
- EP21 PSX
- EP22 Franz Heart
- EP23 Origins Special
- EP24 Philipp Harms
- EP25 Stevie R
- EP27 Petra P.
- EP28 Stulla
- EP29 Unplugged Special
- EP30 Franz Heart
POETRY & IMAGES
We kept the podcast running at an almost impossible weekly pace, meeting a lot of great artists and discovering a lot of great music along the way. But eventually it burned us out, so we turned to VHS-style images: quotes and poems meant to shift how you see a creative life.
We posted them across Facebook and Instagram, and they caught on, growing our pages and pulling in a younger crowd. We ran a campaign: message us, and we'd send you a classic skull bandana, free, if you shared yourself wearing it. Fifty-one people from around the world sent theirs back: the old-school VILL4IN Crew. Later, a Polish follower who went by _HY0 lent his voice to our poetic imagery, work that would surface again as a dedicated track on VOID-002.
"whoever controls the media
controls the mind"
MOVING IMAGE
Around the same time, with help from FR4ME, another one of my high-school best friends, someone I'd known since we were thirteen, we started making videos on our phones.
We upgraded our gear, layered in voice-overs and narrative, and took it seriously even when nobody was watching. The custom cinematic tracks from those videos eventually made their way onto VOID-002. We also brought in R3D, someone I'd met online, to build custom 3D visuals for the underground witch-house, wave and phonk artists we loved. He stayed with us all the way through to now, one of the only old-school VILL4IN people still standing.
VILL4IN is an organization created in 2016 by hidden entities.
“A mask tells us more than a face.”
面具告诉我们的不仅仅是一张脸
VILL4IN exists for the sole purpose to spread sanity in an insane world.
“It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.”
如果能够很好地适应一个病情严重的社会，那么就无法衡量健康状况。
We are not against one single entity. Instead we are against everything that seeks control of your mind.
“We are at war, and the enemy knows that the subconscious absorbs everything.”
我们处于战争状态，敌人知道潜意识会吸收一切。
We have no one location, and we work around the planet.
“We are everywhere and we are nowhere.”
我们无处不在，我们无处可去。
Lost time is never found again.
“Time is valuable, and when it is gone, it is gone.”
时间是宝贵的，当它消失时，它就消失了。
We spread awareness on the internet and work in the real world. There are no limits.
“They use every method. We use every method.”
他们使用每种方法。我们使用每种方法。
"I am the architect
of my own destruction"— VOID TRANSMISSION
PHYSICAL MEDIA
Eager to get back to vinyl, we brought in glitch-artist polygon1993 for the design, back when he was still a complete unknown that nobody had heard of yet, and wave artist Anubis-XIII for a short-run lathe cut. That became VOID-001, just twenty-five copies.
We shared it around, especially with the vaporwave vinyl collectors, and the demand blew past twenty-five fast. So we committed to a full, proper pressing, with a full-colour art book to match. As time went on, CHKLTK joined the team and we kept pushing art and music to match each other. KEVLAR:ESTUDIO joined us too and has stayed with us ever since, and with much respect to them, they helped shape the visual design for all our albums. We went through too many pressing plants. We got a small office, then a bigger one. The rest is history, and a bit of a blur.
SIDE A ・ 表
- Esthesia
- Black Opal
- Red (Negative Sixty)
- Bare
- Ecozones (w/ Kain)
- 76 in the Shade
SIDE B ・ 裏
- Nothing More, Nothing Less
- Ache /XX10716
- Cold Comfort
- Anoesis
- Black Diamond Genesis
- Metallic Oxygen
暗号零 ・ 壱
- 虚空
- 她是一颗耀眼的明星
- 无法入睡
- 变换
- 半圈
- 阴影
暗号零 ・ 弐
- 日食
- 生病和累
- 莲花
- 没有逃脱
- 离开过去
ENTER THE VOID
When the world shut in during the 2020 COVID lockdown, we threw a party online: ENTER THE VOID.
Everything was finally moving for us. We'd just gotten a foot in the door when, out of nowhere, COVID hit and the whole world got locked inside. To be honest, it turned into a strange kind of gift. For once everyone had the time to be fully immersed in the things they loved, the way I doubt any of us will ever get to be again in our lifetimes.
We reached out to every music and visual artist we could, to break the monotony, and it became one of the first of its kind. We built it so anyone could join: every artist was welcome, no gatekeeping. A nonstop audio-visual stream running 83+ hours, with over 100 artists. Halloween weekend, October 30–31, 2020. We made posters, shirts, hoodies, and a 150-page art book, The Glitch Art Bible, featuring some of the legendary glitch artists from the show.
MTHRBORD
After ENTER THE VOID, one thing was clear: the underground was bigger than any one label.
In 2021 we founded MTHRBORD, a home for the most compelling up-and-coming underground art and music, without limits. No genres off the table. No politics. No gatekeeping. One entity became a family of imprints, each with its own lane.
150+ releases later, on vinyl, cassette, VHS, Blu-ray, reel-to-reel and art books, the circuit is still growing.
"gatekeeping is anti-art
I feel it deep in my soul"— BEN (C1PH3R)
VOID TV
ENTER THE VOID started as one weekend. It never really ended.
The show started as VILL4IN TV, a run of episodes we aired on our own YouTube, on VAPOR MEMORY's, and then with our beloved partner RYAN CELSIUS, a well-known name in phonk behind channels like Trapping in Japan, before it grew into VOID TV, with episodes built by the VJs, glitch artists, animators and dream archivists we call the Void Team, because visual artists deserve the same respect as the music they move to.
VOID CITY
Streams end. Chats scroll away. We wanted somewhere to actually stay. We realized the underground never sleeps, so VOID CITY became something we felt we had to build, with huge ambitions: a rave where artists host their own shows and anyone can jump straight in from their browser.
So we built VOID CITY, a browser MMO where the ENTER THE VOID club never closes. Album premieres, movie nights and VOID TV episodes, all in one pixel world. Everyone starts in Tent City, a short walk from the club. Show up, go to events, and work your way up to chilling in your own virtual apartment (still a work in progress 🚧). Ten years ago we were scattering flyers across a city. Now we have our own. It's something R3D and I constantly talk about, one of the most exciting long-term projects we have in mind every time we come back to it.
FUTURE
Ten years in, we're still building for the artists who make all of this.
We made band.codes, a website built for artists, and mthrbord.studio, a plugin platform for artists too. Whatever comes next, will come, and it will not stop.
THE TEAM
"a dream you dream alone is only a dream.
a dream you dream together is real"
And life goes on.
This is the story of VILL4IN's first ten years. Time doesn't stop, and neither can we. We keep going, always looking to the next chapter.
THE UNDERGROUND
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