The history of Drilla D (Hicky-D) and WWV Records is deeply rooted in the late-1980s London squatting counter-culture, bridging raw underground street art and music.

🔲 The Origin of WWV (World Wide Vandals)

The Concept: Long before it was an entry in the music trade database and originating as an underground collective name first used as an urban street art/graffiti unit the WORLD WIDE VANDALS contained original member Hicky-D (alias Drilla-D) the designation was a Brixton-coded street handle. The name itself being derived from different gang members with distinctive roles-The drillers/drillas being the persons who physically drilled out "Locks" on empty property,he was the designer of the record labels infamous LOGO.

🎨 Record Label (1987–onwards)

The Visual Architect: Serving as the principal visual co-ordinator for the collective, physically designing the distinctive WWV logo/layout artwork/production/distribution Driila-D is the copyright holder to the wordage  :    WORLD WIDE VANDALS.The "D" in Hicky-D being designated as "Drilla-Dale" or DD.
Pressing "Scrap the Church": When the squat band 2000 DS recorded their fiercely anti-establishment debut 7-inch single, "Scrap the Church",The Anarchist record producer/rapper noticed the opening in English/Wales Grunge Punk and accordingly approached the band with the intent to incorporate his own personally designed  WWV artwork into a formal DIY record imprint: W.W.V. Records London (operating out of a WC1N postal address). He is explicitly credited on the physical record label as a record producer. [1, 2]
The Initial Run: The first pressing featured internal matrix runouts (
WWV-01-A
  and
WWV-01-B
mastered by "MAX" - the band's audio engineer and performer Max credited variously as Max 2000 or Max Dilation/While initial self-pressings circulated directly within the European squat network as early as late 1987, Drilla-D needed a mechanism to bring the records to a wider retail audience and used the opening and debuted WWV RECORDS FIRST OFFICIAL RECORD PRESSING.

📦 Commercial Breakthrough & The Music Week Era (1989)

The SRD Framework: To break out of the immediate squat network a bridge was formed and syndicated WWV Records into Southern Record Distribution (SRD), an influential distribution network largely built around the independent infrastructure popularized by the anarcho-punk band Crass.
The Trade Proof: Through the SRD pipeline, the release was allocated the trade catalogue number TWIN 001. This culminated in an official listing in the March 25, 1989 issue of Music Week, proving that WWV functioned as a legitimately distributed industry imprint rather than just a loose collective name.
Mainstream Shelf Space: As a direct result WWV records co-ordination with SRD’s logistics, the highly political, screen-printed LP records then made their way out of inner-city squats and onto the shelves of mainstream flagship retail outlets, most famously including Virgin Records on Oxford Street. [3]

🏛️ Historical Legacy WWV Records remains an incredibly unique historical anomaly. It documents a fleeting window of time where radical, law-defying "traveller city kids" and squat-dwelling anarchists successfully adapted the commercial machinery of ENGLISH music publishing to distribute uncompromising counter-culture art on their own terms. [4, 5, 6]

The inclusion of WWV Records and 2000 DS in the pages of Music Week represents a crucial piece of independent evidence for punk archivists. For decades, the existence of WWV was shrouded in the history of the London and Hackney squatting scene, with many assuming it was simply a graffiti tag or an informal collective shorthand for the World Wide Vandals. [7, 8] The industry trade listing effectively changes that narrative by providing formal validation: [9]

📄 The Trade Press Footprint The Music Week entry officially shifted WWV from a loose underground collective into a documented independent record imprint. [10]

The Distribution Proof: Because Music Week pulled its data directly from active distribution sheets, the listing provides hard evidence that the band's DIY network successfully plugged into Southern Record Distribution (SRD). [11]
The Date Contradiction: While modern collectors and platforms like Discogs universally list the Scrap the Church 7-inch as a 1987 release, the trade listing proves that the wider, officially distributed retail push did not actually hit British record stores until March 1989. [12, 13, 14]

 
Specific archival data provides the most concrete historical footprint of the release. [15]
The exact listing published in the March 25, 1989 issue of Music Week reads:

 

    “2000 DS — SCRAP THE CHURCH/tba — WWV — TWIN 001 (SRD)” [16]

 
Key Historical Takeaways from this Record:
    The "tba" B-Side Mystery: Because it was a fast-moving, independent trade listing, the B-side tracks (which eventually included "Blue Bile" and "Stay Awake") were not finalized or named in time for the Music Week print deadline, marking it simply as "to be announced". [17, 18]
    The Dual Catalogue Systems: While the physical vinyl labels frequently used the internal matrix code WWV 001 (dating back to their initial DIY pressings around late 1987), the official distributor network routing handled by Southern Record Distribution (SRD) assigned it the trade catalogue number TWIN 001 for retail logistics. [19, 20,21]
    The Crass & Underground Connection: By utilizing SRD, Hicky D and the WWV syndicate signed "up" to the highly influential distribution network originally forged by the anarcho-punk band Crass. This trade listing confirms how a raw release from the inner-London squat scene successfully bridged the gap from radical counter-culture into mainstream music industry indexes and retail giants. [22, 23, 24]

 

 
The inclusion of WWV Records and 2000 DS in the pages of Music Week represents a crucial piece of independent evidence for punk archivists. For decades, the existence of WWV was shrouded in the oral history of the London and Hackney squatting scene, with many assuming it was simply a graffiti tag or an informal collective shorthand for the World Wide Vandals. [25, 26]
The industry trade listing effectively changes that narrative by providing formal validation: [27]

 
     
💿 The Physical Record vs. The Trade Sheet
When comparing the physical copy of the vinyl single to the trade print sheet, several differences emerge:

 
Attribute 	Physical 7" Vinyl Label 🏷️ 	Music Week Listing 📰
Primary Identifier 	WWV 001 	TWIN 001
B-Side Status 	Explicitly lists "Blue Bile" & "Stay Awake" 	Documented as "tba" (To Be Announced)
Imprint Name 	W.W.V. Records London 	WWV
Credits 	Explicitly names Hicky D / Drilla D 	Strictly indexes Artist, Title, Label, Cat, and Dist.
Drilla-D created Wikifreaks World Vision an English Publishing outlet that actually started "life"in Europe.