song premiere: "Two Dimensional Distance" - Vari Vice

words: Michael Brooks

The current emergence of young bands playing and recording music with outdated equipment seems to be far less about nostalgia for a time they never experienced and more about this looming feeling that the technology we surround ourselves with on a daily basis is slowly destroying us.

“Two Dimensional Distance”, the lead single off Vari Vice’s debut EP, WHAT REALITY WILL THEY USE OVER YOU?, is a hodgepodge of the 1980s—it’s at once desolate, pulsating, somber, and catchy. Daniel Byers, who also plays in Little Star, is a savant of this era. If Little Star is Byers romanticizing over The Cure than Vari Vice is a full-fledged love letter to New Order. Surging on top of an electronic drum pattern that sputters and clangs like a large piece of machinery going haywire, the track quickly settles into its groove, creating space for all of its moving parts. Amidst a thick haze of atmospheric guitar work and sullen, deteriorating synth pads the track slowly burrows itself into a seemingly infinite abyss of reverb. This claustrophobia makes it difficult to figure out exactly what words are being sung, but the emotion behind them couldn’t be any clearer. “Two Dimensional Distance” is a noisy and introspective reflection of everyday life inside of a digital wasteland.

WHAT REALITY WILL THEY USE OVER YOU? is out 6/30 via Good Cheer Records.