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.
VR SEX are audio/visual provocateurs who transpose the identifiers of death rock, synth punk, post-punk, ambient, and ethereal soundscapes into an audit on technology and its imprint on our collective psyche. Their debut EP, Horseplay, was recorded solely by the mercenary seer Noel Skum (Andrew Clinco of Drab Majesty/Marriages) and initially released as a limited edition cassette in April 2019.
Through PSRS or Procreation Simulation Reproduction Stimulation, humans can act on their hedonistic desires and not face the responsibilities and consequences that come with being an ill-prepared guardian. The future of our offspring will exist in virtual realms and population growth in turn will be stabilized. VR SEX is the cure to most societal ills. Rather than being emblematic of influences, each song by VR SEX infuses a dire tension that cuts shimmer with fetid frequencies, never establishing an aural hierarchy or urgency. Instead, we’re led into punchy capsules of “dour pop”; the balance of saccharine and sour so emblematic of the VR SEX hive mind.
EP / Digital Album
HIDE are an electronic duo based in Chicago, made up of fine artist Gabel and percussionist Seth Sher. Together since 2014, the pair create sample based compositions using a combination of self sourced field recordings and various pop culture/media. Releases include 2016′s Black Flame EP which is dedicated to the memory of Reyhana Jabbari, a 27 year old Iranian woman who was hung for allegedly killing someone who trying to rape her, and deals with various human rights violations in Iran. HIDE’s 2017 debut album Castration Anxiety on Dais Records addresses issues of power dynamics and representation. Seething with textured yet minimal tracks, HIDE gives raw vulnerability an opportunity to unfurl, yielding an album that calls for personal autonomy and the destruction of anything barring the way. A single on Sub-pop for the label’s singles club followed, with two unhinged tracks touching on the phenomenon of internalized misogyny and aspects of motherhood.
LP / Digital Album
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.
VR SEX are audio/visual provocateurs who transpose the identifiers of death rock, synth punk, post-punk, ambient, and ethereal soundscapes into an audit on technology and its imprint on our collective psyche. Comprised of visionary mercenaries Noel Skum (Andrew Clinco of Drab Majesty), Z. Oro (Aaron Montaigne of Antioch Arrow/Heroin/DBC) on vocals and drums, and Mico Frost (Brian Tarney) on synths and electric bass.
Their debut tome, Human Traffic Jam, focuses on lyrical themes that probe the possibilities of loss of autonomy through social media, the decline of human interaction, and celebrity favoritism. Skum believes in the stabilization of society and preservation of our planet by reducing its amount of procreators.
Through PSRS or Procreation Simulation Reproduction Stimulation, humans can act on their hedonistic desires and not face the responsibilities and consequences that come with being an ill-prepared guardian. The future of our offspring will exist in virtual realms and population growth in turn will be stabilized. VR SEX is the cure to most societal ills.
LP / CD / Digital Album
As a musical act, Xeno & Oaklander (Sean McBride and Liz Wendelbo) conflate a rich love of analog synths, melody, and mythology with eloquent nuance and a nod to the heritage they draw from. While that construct is the duo’s immediate kiss and crush, there’s a deeper importance to their collaboration which began in 2004. As evidenced in their debut Vigils (2004), McBride and Wendelbo’s artistic dynamic is more than just a mutual love for electronics but a contrast between architectural precision and painterly expression. From the film scores to the traditional albums they’ve recorded in their Brooklyn studio, they’ve both spurred and fostered the global synth wave revival through a commitment to analog-only production and performance as well as a strident respect for the medium.
On their latest album Hypnos and first for the Dais imprint, the duo leveraged the talents of visual artist and live sound engineer Egan Frantz to mix the album. It’s a touch that adds both punch and balance, allowing their inherent conceptual voices to converge into a collage with defined edges and warm, synapses of frequency and beat.
LP / Digital Album
Over the course of the last two decades, Detroit-based duo ADULT. (Nicola Kuperus and Adam Lee Miller) have released six albums and nineteen EPs and singles across some of our favorite labels: Mute, Ghostly International, Thrill Jockey, Clone Records, Third Man Records, and their own label, the revered Ersatz Audio. November 1998 marked their first release: the five-song 12″ “Dispassionate Furniture”. This September, twenty years later, Dais Records is proud to announce ADULT.’s seventh full length album: THIS BEHAVIOR.
The album began as 23 demos written and recorded in a remote cabin in the woods of Northern Michigan during the dead of winter. In total isolation, and with a reduced amount of gear (a modified version of their live setup) on the cabin’s kitchen table, the duo were completely immersed in an incessant inescapable studio of their own making – looping, repetitive analogue sequences grinding away day and night. At the end of the intense demo session, a handful of peers were enlisted by the band for the difficult task of paring down the demos into the final album.
The result is 10 tracks of uncompromising dark electronics, showcasing ADULT.’s return to aggressive and energetic dancefloor mastery. Album opener “This Behavior” alongside the follow-up “Violent Shakes” (which ascends into synths wailing like warning sirens over Kuperus’s commanding vocals) set the stage for an on-edge listen, while the heartbreaking “Silent Exchange” unfolds as a beautiful sad synth dirge. “Perversions of Humankind” breaks the mood – driving the listener into a slow and low groove before the frantic album midpoint of “Irregular Pleasure”. “Does The Body Know?” is the album’s post-punk anthem, with irresistible singalong “we’re out of order – we’re undefined!” The latter half of the album drives forward with “On The Edge (You Put Me…)” and “Lick Out The Content”, refusing rest and demanding movement and response. “Everything & Nothing” emerges slowly from sparkling synth textures, snowballing with nervous energy into an acid techno stomper before the album comes to a close on the icy landscape of “In All The Debris”, a goose-bump inducing slow electronic mantra that closes the curtain on a massive album.
LP / CD / Digital Album
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