Technology was meant to be humanity’s tool to combat famine, disease, confusion, and to facilitate life, culture, and innovation. Instead, we’re mired in a digital labyrinth that few care to navigate or even solve. Perhaps it’s not a ruse and the matrices coded by keyboard maestros are a path to liberation, but without querying the constructs we cannot ruminate on their affectations on humanity.

Rooted in the mythos of the underbelly of Los Angeles, cybernetiks, and a vision of the future as dystopia through VHS scanlines of time passed, Noel Skum's (Andrew Clinco) VR SEX transpose the identifiers of acid punk, death rock, and ethereal soundscapes into an audit on technology and its imprint on our collective psyche.

Human Traffic Jam, an exploration of heavier sounds and darker themes (versus the dreamier, "tragic wave" of Drab Majesty), focuses on lyrical themes that probe the possibilities of loss of autonomy through social media, the decline of human interaction, and celebrity favoritism. Each song on the LP infuses a dire tension that cuts shimmer with fetid frequencies, never establishing an aural hierarchy or urgency. Instead, we’re lead into punchy capsules of "dour pop"; the balance of saccharine and sour.

Rough Dimension refers to the warped, wicked underworld the songs both chronicle and condemn. The results are notably ripping, refined, and riveting. A bristling mix of the melodic and the macabre, absurdist observations of fast living and desperate measures, the clock of youth ticking towards midnight as dreams unravel in Babylon.

VR SEX's third album, Hard Copy, is dense, rich, and spatial, spurred by Clinco’s muse of "reckless abandon." Shadows of Japanese psych, Chrome, Stick Men With Rayguns, and anthemic sludge, Hard Copy is more sardonic and saturated, oscillating between ripped leather riffing and space echo meltdowns.