The Vicar (music producer, The Vicar Chronicles)
| The Vicar | |
|---|---|
The enigmatic Vicar
|
|
| Background information | |
| Birth name | David (surname undisclosed) |
| Born | 21 March 1961 |
| Origin | England |
| Genres | Art rock, art pop, ambient music, experimental music |
| Occupation(s) | Record producer, diarist, sleuth, aesthete |
| Instruments | Audio editing software, guitar, bass guitar, piano, various |
| Years active | 1981–present |
| Labels | Discipline Global Mobile, Regina Records |
| Associated acts | Lewis Taylor, Andy Yorke, King Crimson, Billy G, Pearlfishers, Sweet Billy Pilgrim, The Glamour Twins, Robert Fripp, Diva, The Indie Soul Movement, Steve Porter |
| Website | thevicar |
The Vicar is a persona and multimedia project created by record producer, songwriter and Internet entrepreneur David Singleton. Since 2001, the project has produced music (singles and albums), a public diary, fictional stories (in blog, videoblog, print paperback and graphic novel form) and several culture-jamming initiatives.
Having allowed speculation over the Vicar's true identity to grow for over a decade, Singleton formally (although slightly ambiguously) revealed himself to be the creator of the Vicar in 2013, on the occasion of the release of the first Vicar album Songbook#1. Singleton has summarised the project ethos as being "that music and music alone should take centre stage without the current obsession with personality and celebrity, nor with the damaging thieving hand of the mainstream music business."
The core of the project is a semi-fictional/pseudonymous record producer referred to only as "The Vicar" (although over the course of the stories, his first name is occasionally revealed as "David"). In the Chronicles, novels and video blogs (presented as "surreal tales from the underbelly of the music industry") the Vicar is portrayed as a British eccentric who, in parallel to his production career, works as an industry troubleshooter and sleuth (aided and abetted by his rascally and long-suffering assistant Punk Sanderson). Although he is generally hired to solve the problems of senior industry executives the Vicar clearly has little respect for them, preferring to express a sardonic sympathy for exploited musicians and artists. On record, the Vicar's trademark sound is created by Singleton's own songwriting, production and arrangement talents, with guest appearances from some of the world's most outstanding musicians.
There is a clear overlap between the Vicar's fictional ethos and the actual campaigning ethos of Discipline Global Mobile (the record label run by Singleton in collaboration with Robert Fripp), and the character has been used as a method for protesting against corrupt practices within the recording business. Consequently, the Vicar has been described as being "a campaigner for artist rights and scourge of the evil empire of the record industry, both fictionally (in the stories) and in reality" while the stories have been described as "Sherlock Holmes meets Spinal Tap."
...
Wikipedia