A new album from Pope John Paul Van Damme arrives on Machine Records on 1 March 2024 in digital and CD formats.

Titled 'Echoes Of An Abandoned Future', it features a continuous mix of eight new tracks of acid-infused IDM and jungle, crafted for live performance and the dance-floor.

Pope John Paul Van Damme, AKA Cardiff's Tom Wallace, has a string of releases to his very long name in the last few years, including 'How Am I Not Myself?', a vinyl release on Last Riot Records, tracks on Wales Electronic Producers Network (WEPN) collective compilation CDs, and an impressive stack of Bandcamp self-releases. He's also been a regular live performer, recently appearing with Ned Rush in Cardiff as part of his More Kicks Than Friends YouTube channel tour.

Tom will be launching 'Echoes Of An Abandoned Future' in Cardiff on 1 March 2024 with a live show also featuring Machine Records' John Barnes (aka Sam Arnold ex Mountain Men Anonymous) and then playing a second More Kicks Than Friends show on 9 March in Brighton. Tom's also curating a More Kicks Than Friends episode featuring Welsh artists, including Little Eris, Sunbane, John Barnes, Lifting Gear Engineer, Stereo Minus One and more.

The release of 'Echoes Of An Abandoned Future' is the result of Machine Records collaboration with Wales Electronic Producers Network (WEPN). This previously saw a single release from Veins Full Of Static (a Veins Full Of Static album will follow later in 2024). WEPN has been operating out of Cardiff for the last few years, holding networking and live music events and releasing a variety of digital and CD compilations from its members, including Tom. We love it when we see people doing this kind of phenomenal work to build the Welsh electronic music scene!

We caught up with Tom to discuss his new album.

Machine:
How long have you been releasing music as Pope John Paul Van Damme?

Tom:
I started using the Pope John Paul Van Damme alias in around 2021. Before that I’d released stuff as LoPan, All I Heard Was Static, Cowmare, Stompbox, Surf or Fight, and maybe a few others over the course of about 15 years. I’m already toying with the idea of other aliases though, so we’ll see how long this one lasts…

Machine:
Do the different names reflect different styles?

Tom:
Sort of. I cycled through loads of names when I was starting out back in 2006 just because I couldn’t settle on what I wanted to do. I had a (really bad) post-rock album as ‘Surf or Fight’, then started making hip-hop beats as Cowmare. All I Heard Was Static was a band I was in briefly with a drummer.

LoPan became my main name for a bit when I settled into the electronic stuff more a few years ago, but there’s a few other producers and bands that also have that name, so finding my stuff was difficult. That was when I made the switch to PJPVD. But I think I’ll be using LoPan as a hip-hop producer alias in the future. I’d like to do some lo-fi house releases at some point, which would probably be under another name.

Machine: I will have to hear some Cowmare!

Tom:
I think it’s all been erased from the face of the internet now. That was MySpace days. Maybe I’ll bring that alias back at some point.

Machine:
In terms of PJPVD releases, I know you had a vinyl release this year, and the WEPN tracks - there are others too?

Tom:
I self-released three albums last year, which were collections of tracks written in 2021 and 2022. Echoes Of An Abandoned Future will be my fifth album under that name.

There are also three improvised ‘mini-albums’ which are only avaliable on Bandcamp. They were recorded from improvised jam sessions with a few Korg Volcas - a Drum, Nubass, FM, and Modular.

Machine:
What’s your set up like? Do you use much hardware gear generally?

Tom:
They’re the only releases I’ve used hardware on. I find hardware better for improvisation and more performance-based material, but I find it much easier to write and develop parts using software. I use samples of hardware though, and try to give my music an analogue feel.

Machine:
How did you get into doing music?

Tom:
I had piano lessons as a teenager, which is when I learnt music theory, and first did some composition for music GCSE and music technology A-Level. I also wrote some music on guitar, but it wasn’t until I was at college that I wrote my first ‘track’. For some reason we were sent home from college for the day, so I decided I was going to use the time to try to write and record a song. I wrote a track about climate change - I’d recently been to see ‘An Inconvenient Truth’ in the cinema.

I used a crappy PC mic that came with the family computer to record piano and acoustic guitar and some banging on the table with a lot of filtering to make drum sounds. At that point I only had CoolEdit Pro (now Adobe Audition). I had no soft-synths, I could only generate sound from recorded audio. I used a really bad text to speech thing to have a voice giving tips about saving energy. It was pretty bad, but it felt good to write a song.

Machine:
I made my first tracks using CoolEdit as well. :)

Tom:
After that I got hold of a copy of Cubase from school, and started making more stuff with guitar and piano, which led to the ‘post-rock’ album I mentioned earlier. Lots of bad trumpet and violin sound fonts.

Around the same time I was getting into Stones Throw records. Hearing about how Madlib and J Dilla were making beats with a 404 made it seem more accessible, so I thought I’d give that a go.

I watched Eraserhead and as soon as I heard ‘In Heaven’ I thought it would make a cool sample, so my first hip-hop beat was sampling that. I did a bunch of hip-hop beats for a bit. Then discovering IDM like Venetian Snares and Drukqs opened up a whole new world. I downloaded Reason, bought a MicroKorg, and attempted to start making IDM. I was only doing it a sporadically, though, so I didn't make much progress.

A few years ago I decided to give it a proper go and invested in Ableton and a new laptop. I started learning about synthesis and studying the music more to understand what was actually going on. YouTube was also a massive help, particularly Ned Rush and Stazma who I've learned a lot from.

Machine:
Coming to this new release - what is it about?

Tom:
The album started out as an attempt to write something specifically for live performance, so it was originally written with more of a utilitarian approach. I tend to lean towards sounds that have an otherworldly, dreamy feeling to them but I like to combine that with a bit of chaos and madness, so there’s something about the balance between chaos and order on the album.

When it comes to meaning - I like David Lynch’s thoughts on that. He says ideas are like fish swimming around in the deepest depths of our consciousness.We can delve into there and ‘go fishing’ and pluck them out, but they’re kind of separate from us in a way, so we don’t always understand them. I’ve always loved surreal artworks that exist somewhere between reality and dreams, and my music reflects that.

I think it’s more fun to work on instinct and make stuff without worrying about what it means. Then when it’s done you can look back at it and think ‘Oh, maybe this is what it represents’.

Machine:
In the title you reference an “abandoned future”, what is the idea behind that?

Tom:
I have a lot of conflicting feelings around nostalgia. I find the relationship between the past and future, and the way they can blur and overlap, interesting. So the title refers to that. There’s also a reference to parallel dimensions and different paths that can be co-existing alongside each other. Films like Interstellar and Arrival that play with time really affect me. I’m not entirely sure why.

Machine:
Last question. Jungle is making a bit of a come-back lately. Is that something you see yourself as part of?

Tom:
I tend to jump around genres a bit, so although I’d say a lot of my tracks have jungle elements there’s only a few that I’d say fit into that scene. It’s definitely something I want to do more of though. I love the rawness of it. It’s got a kind of punk attitude but you can dance to it.