Like who?

I really, really love PC Music and think everyone involved in it is so unbelievably talented. I remember listening to a mix on their SoundCloud three years ago, before it was so focused on pop, that incorporated elements of hardstyle, jumpstyle, and trance. It was the first time I felt like somebody was looking back on those sounds in a way that was referential. I read an interview where SOPHIE was saying that it’s not satire or necessarily meant to be funny, and I definitely get that vibe.

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Many people who’ve been influenced by PC Music take trance or pop tropes and exaggerate them for an absurd effect. My attempt is to look back at early 2000s and try to pull out what it genuinely felt like — this cyber ethereal feeling — with no irony and full sincerity. I think that’s been hard for some people to parse—like, a really earnest love letter to y2k? Why?! The answer is: because I think it’s worthwhile and so beautiful.

PC Music was the first reference that came to my mind when I heard Virtual Self! I interviewed SOPHIE a couple months ago, and she did say that her intentions have always been sincere. It’s interesting how some critics assume a degree of irony when these sounds are excavated. PC Music is known for their hyper-modern, complex productions. I’m curious about the production techniques you used.

I spent a better part of a year learning how to recreate these sounds authentically. I spent a lot of time digging into sample packs people were using in the early 2000s and trying to figure out why things sounded the way they do. There’s a sound called the supersaw — the quintessential trance synth — first made in 1998 using the Roland JP-8000. I wanted to investigate what made it sound so different from contemporary synths.

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Another big thing was trying to implement song structures and dance music sensibilities from 2017-2018, while using almost exclusively a palette of sounds from the early 2000s. “Ghost Voices” starts out with the hook, but if it was a song from back then, it would start with three minutes of intro drums and bass.

Which artists from back then feel like Virtual Self?

Vincent De Moore is definitely my favorite trance artist of all time. He made this track “Fly Away,” and whenever I play as Virtual Self, I play a lot of his music. He had a great sense of chords and melody — everything he did felt really ethereal in a beautiful way. I was obsessed with Onoken, an artist involved in dance rhythm games. t.A.T.u is a big influence. At the first Virtual Self show, I played “Not Gonna Get Us” — that shit is so awesome. It’s like, crazy distorted breakbeats with deep trance synths on top. Their music videos were so clearly influenced by The Matrix.

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A lot of contemporary trance is over the top emotionally, but earlier trance was really reserved. It was emotional but somehow quite cold and technological — not warm and fuzzy. But I didn’t want Virtual Self to be exclusively referential; I was always trying to incorporate some kind of twist so it’s an homage to a time period but somehow distorted. That’s why I like the second drop of “Neon Breaks.” I was like, what if we took that trancey sound, but the drum sensibility was insane metal backbeats?

Is that what you meant by “neo-trance,” the genre title on “Ghost Voices”?

I have a notefile on my phone of a hundred different genre names to describe Virtual Self, and most of them are bad, but “neo-trance” is the one that felt fitting. Virtual Self is represented by these two characters, Pathselector and technic-Angel. Pathselector’s songs I’d describe as “neo-trance”—they’re less hardcore-influenced and strictly trancey sounding, with a 909-loop techno, progressive house, two-step garage kind of vibe. They’re mid-tempo — 120 to 140 BPM. Technic-Angel’s songs are maximalist, 170 BPM, crazy hardcore, speedcore, jungle, and drum and bass. The DJ sets of Virtual Self are split, alternating between mysterious dark techy and an insane, aggressive, million-synths-playing-at-once kind of sensibility.