Mrs Vee - Manifesto – Audvee05 - is a compilation album that is put together by the community based website Mrs Vee. The compilations are released under the creative commons licence, which is quite refreshing, unfortunately the music on them isn’t!

A glance at the Mrs Vee website lets us know that there are many many tracks available for free download, whether they be full compilation albums, or individual tracks. There is not much more information about the collective, where they are from, or what the goal of Mrs Vee is. It seems that the role of the Mrs Vee website is to promote and distribute free music of the ambient/experimental rock variation. The problem with giving out music free, is that sometimes the quality suffers, as there is not in place a stringent quality control process. This is exactly what has happened with the Manifesto compilation. The Mrs Vee collective may have been better off releasing a compilation that was mixed in some way, either by a DJ, or using computer mixing software.

Mrs Vee may have also been better of having tighter quality controls, or even favouring quality over quantity. AudVee5 has 14 tracks on it, and they all fit into the ambient/experimental/post-progressive spectrum. To be honest though the compilation would have been better served by having less tracks with an overall higher quality level. There are some bright moments on the compilation, most notably Orphidice’s - Coming Home. The song is made in a minimal, tribal style, with some really nice string programming, swanning the song to a natural crescendo. Sand Snowmans – Twilight of the Dogs – sounds like a latter day Air track, and the vocal harmonies work well with the guitar melody. There are two more tracks on Audvee05 that contain vocals, General Paulus’s - So how far would you go?, which sounds like a poor mans Depeche Mode, and the self titled track, Lovers of London, that has the effect of sounding like a young Charlatans.

Don’t get me wrong there are some people that will like this style of post-progressive imitation, I am just personally not so sure. When Audvee05 gets deeper into the experimental side of things, the album starts to get a little more interesting. Goodbye Pluto [6], Mox [7] and Electronica Ghost Voice Phenomenon [8] serve up some nice electronica and noise. The production is not up to the standards of the crème noise producers out there, but there is no doubt some good synth programming and some nice ideas. Perhaps we can summize that there is a lot of potential on the album, just some of the execution is lacking.

The Manifesto compilation would have been better if it were put together into a long stream of new music by up and coming producers, but splitting the album into individual tracks has the effect of making the whole compilation seem a little disjointed. The community based site (Mrsvee.com) is a good idea and the organisers have to be applauded in their dedication to the music. Perhaps, in time, the quality of the music they output will increase, but, as for now, the site and the album is good for a cruise through, but I wouldn’t rely on it for the long haul.