Virtual Riot and VJ Neurite Talk Performing Together and Promoting Video Jockeys [INTERVIEW]

With his popularity soaring and a new album on the way, Virtual Riot is using his platform to give due credit to VJ Neurite and video jockeys everywhere.

Meeting Christian “Val” Brunn, the German artist behind the surging bass act Virtual Riot, the first thing you may notice is his wave of powder blue hair – or whatever color it happens to be at the time you cross paths. Similarly, the first thing that catches your eye when meeting Carmen Aguirre, Virtual Riot’s multi-hyphenate creative director, co-manager, and video jockey under the moniker VJ Neurite, may be her vibrant purple hair, often fashioned into pigtails with one of a variety of complementary ribbons. But chat with them for even just a couple of minutes and you’ll quickly be given a window into their core identities: talented, enthusiastic creatives with an eye for detail and genuine passion for their art.

Exron Music had the pleasure of sitting down with Val and Carmen ahead of their show in Portland, Oregon, just the second stop on their Stealing Fire Tour across North America. Tucked away in the green room at Bossanova Ballroom with the muffled sounds of beastboi’s set bumping in the background, the duo welcomed us with open arms as they prepared to take the stage. It also happened to be the release day for “Give in to you,” Virtual Riot’s eerie new collab with Rezz and One True God.

Carmen has known Rezz for “many many years” and sent her a folder of song ideas from Val one day. “I had some stuff I was sitting on that was in the right realm, the right BPM,” Val recalls. “We sent it to her and she liked it,” and they ultimately decided to work on the song together in Toronto, Rezz’s hometown. “We were planning to meet up with Joel [deadmau5] anyway, and she doesn’t live too far, so she just came over.” Carmen and Val both sang the praises of the “mau5 house,” which was full of taxidermy animals and memorabilia from Tim Hortons, Canada’s beloved coffee and donut chain.

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“It was fun watching them work on it together,” Carmen says. “She never works with somebody right there, she usually just sends something off and they send something back… That was one of her first times actually working with somebody side-by-side and she said she really enjoyed that process.” Rezz brought on One True God to provide the vocals for the song, and he “nailed it… spot on.” The track became a joint release on Monstercat and Hypnovision and the first single from Virtual Riot’s forthcoming album ‘Stealing Fire,’ his first album since 2021’s ‘Simulation.’

“I had a few of the songs already started before I found the idea that the album would be built around,” Val explains. He came across a book at Carmen’s house called ‘Stealing Fire,’ which was about “how we as humans are trying to always find an altered state of mind” in any way possible, including dance, music, psychedelics, extreme sports, or gambling. The book likened this to “Prometheus bringing fire from the gods to the humans and sharing it with everyone,” and Val saw a connection with his sharing music and music production knowledge with people.

The title ‘Stealing Fire’ holds a double meaning for Val as well. “I’ll listen to other people’s music and… [say] ‘This is fire!’, and then I’ll want to implement that in my own songs in my own way, and that’s all kind of encompassed in that title,” he says. “Every song kind of steals something from some other tune that I really like or that means a lot to me, but in a way that it’s not, like, ‘stealing’ stealing.”

Virtual Riot’s brand of sample-heavy dubstep is a far cry from the proper techno that careens through the clubs and radios in Val’s home country of Germany. “I never got into techno,” admits Val, who was mostly a fan of emo and screamo music in his early youth. “When I grew up I didn’t know a lot of electronic music. I only knew what they were playing at the bumper cars at our local village fair once a year which was like ‘Future Trance Volume 44’ or just some really basic stuff. I thought that’s all there is to electronic music for the longest time because I didn’t hear anything else.”

Val first got into electronic music with the likes of Pendulum and Skrillex, and quickly got into production and DJing. His first gig was in Cologne, “the only big spot in Germany where you have dubstep.” He moved to the United States to find more demand for his style of music. “[In Germany] I played maybe zero to two times a month, and here [in the US] 1 to 3 times a week.” His first American home was Los Angeles, but he recently moved to Minneapolis for a number of reasons including the proximity to friends like Carmen and her husband, and the weather’s similarity to back home.

The gamer-core style of Virtual Riot was born from an early love for video games that persists to this day. His earliest favorite games were Commander Keen and Pinball 95, which he played a lot around age 6 while he was also developing his musical talent by learning the piano. Video game soundtracks and related genres were a big influence for him, particularly Scottish producer Unicorn Kid who developed the genres of chiptune and seapunk. “Video games and music production sometimes feel like they overlap,” he says. “At some point, Ableton just feels like you’re playing a video game. I feel like it’s triggering the same neurons for me, giving me the same dopamine that a video game would give me.”

Video game references spill over considerably into the visuals for Virtual Riot’s live shows, which fall under the purview of Carmen’s video jockey alter ego VJ Neurite. Video jockeying is essentially the visual equivalent of DJing, coordinating the on-screen graphics with the music to create a synchronized experience for the crowd. While fans often assume that visuals are pre-recorded to match the DJ’s set, in reality they’re typically mixed live at the venue by an out-of-sight VJ. Some VJs, including Carmen, even do the whole thing by hand with no assistance from audio-matching software.

“Val and I have known each other for like seven years and started working together like a year later,” Carmen reminisces. “He knew me when I became a VJ. He was a pretty small artist at the time, and one day we were just like ‘How cool would it be if one day we did stuff together?’… I would VJ some of his small shows and I started working on making visuals, and we’ve been working together ever since.” She has also video jockeyed for several other artists including Barely Alive, Riot Ten, and Whipped Cream, but her time working with Virtual Riot is by far the longest.

Carmen even had a stint coordinating stage design and running an entire tour production company for pop music artists. “While I was doing that I really missed the rawness of getting to work with an artist super closely,” she admits. “I really like working on bringing something to life with someone who is really detail-oriented and… actually gives opinions.” Val jokes, “You like it when someone looks over your shoulder and says ‘Move that five pixels to the left.’”

At this point, HVDES, the final opener for the night, walks into the green room as she arrives for her set, which begins in about half an hour. After some quick introductions and a brief discussion about the tastiness of Nerds Gummy Clusters, she settles in to listen to the rest of our interview. Carmen has spent a lot of time with other female artists like HVDES, giving her plenty of opportunities to trade tips on how to navigate the treacherous waters of being a woman in the music industry. She remembers all sorts of examples over the years of having her ability and credentials doubted while less experienced men breezed through unquestioned, not to mention instances of sexual harassment and being called “honey, baby, sweetie.”

Helping to fight the challenges that women face in the industry to “pave a path for it to be easier for other women in the future” is something that Carmen sees as very important. She’s been happy to see some progress in that area, and especially to see far more female VJs than when she started. But one recent conversation with Nostalgix has given her pause on the topic. “I was like ‘Everything’s gotten a lot better in the last eight years,’ and she’s like ‘Has it gotten better, or are you just respected more?’ That really made me think and question it… I may be blind to some of what’s still going on in the whole industry.”

About a year and a half ago, Carmen began taking the stage with Val to VJ their Virtual Riot shows rather than doing it from front of house, which is the industry norm. “We had been talking about it for a little longer than that… but we were pretty scared about the tech and all of the things that would go into figuring that out.” Their hand was forced when they played a show at a venue in China where VJing from the stage was the only option. “ We had so much fun together, and we were like ‘We need to figure this out.’”. Two shows later, in Thailand, she was able to VJ from the stage again, and they never went back.

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From a functional standpoint, moving Carmen onstage has made it much easier for her and Val to communicate about changes to the set, such as skipping songs or changing up the BPM. “Before, I could maybe send a text message and hope that we even have signal and that she sees it,” Val remembers. “I feel less awkward and less nervous now as well because I’m not alone onstage. There’s only been upsides to it.” They’ve even coordinated some dance routines to help pump up the crowd during their sets.

But it’s not all sunshine and roses VJing from the stage. “It’s not easy to dance, time your visuals, and never look upset when things are going wrong in the middle of the show – because you’re gonna have tech issues from stage,” Carmen explains. “I don’t even think I could do it if I hadn’t done seven years of VJing beforehand.” From the corner of the green room, HVDES hypes her up: “That’s another level of talent!”

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Ultimately, though, the biggest reason for bringing Carmen onstage with Val for Virtual Riot sets was to bring awareness to the art of video jockeying that so many dance music fans take for granted. “There are so many VJs around the whole world that make amazing, beautiful shows for artists, and no one even knows who they are,” Carmen says. Val chimes in, “Or that they are even there! Or that someone is even doing that!” Carmen agrees and expands, “It’s not to say that I think every VJ should get on stage… We just want people to come to shows and go ‘Who made that?’”

Virtual Riot and VJ Neurite have already made a lot of progress spreading the word on the hidden art of video jockeying. Carmen’s Instagram and Patreon accounts are full of explainers on what a VJ does and the basics of how it’s done, something that wasn’t available when she started out. Still, they know it’s a long road ahead. “I made a video recently walking around [Beyond Wonderland at the Gorge] asking people what VJs are, and eight out of ten people said vagina,” says Carmen. “So there’s a lot of work to be done.”

Featured Image: Instagram / VJ Neurite

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