NGHTMRE's "DRMVRSE" Album Is a Hallucinogenic Matrix: "We're About to Ship You On the Craziest Journey of Your Life"
No blue tablet or purple tablet can replicate the mind-bending matrix of NGHTMRE’s DRMVRSE.
NGHTMRE launched his long-awaited debut studio album on September ninth after eight years of cranking out hits similar to “REDLIGHT” and “GUD VIBRATIONS.” The album is only one vibrant star within the deep expanse of DRMVRSE.
The cinematic venture is a methodical piece of fiction with music, animation and narrative elements—and that is simply scratching the planet’s floor. DRMVRSE tells the story of a fictional NeuroTech firm that discovers a sonic frequency referred to as “Unsound,” main customers by gateways to different bodily planes of existence.
A DMT-dose of portal-jumping and epic battles are the established order inside NGHTMRE’s playground.
“It sends you into this loopy, universe-type dream state and it is controllable,” NGHTMRE tells EDM.com. “That type of turns into nearly like a managed substance… It is set sooner or later the place somebody is waking up [hooked] to a machine they usually’re like, ‘Okay, we’re about to ship you on the craziest journey of your life proper now…'”
“The Unsound are these frequencies that perhaps could not have been heard or felt or skilled earlier than,” NGHTMRE continues. “It sends you into the depths.”
DRMVRSE is just NGHTMRE’s first studio album however he crafted it meticulously in hopes of presenting his magnum opus.
“It was naturally having the ambition to wish to create a cool piece of artwork that was an entire factor, fairly than simply little items of inspiration right here and there,” NGHTMRE says. “One thing slightly bit extra cohesive that might final the check of time and would give me extra of a setting and a platform to have all these little tales and tales and movies and songs to exist in a universe for DRMVRSE.”
Penning his new album, NGHTMRE took inspiration from the Hero’s Journey, also called the monomyth, an archetypal story sample involving a hero. There are three acts: departure, initiation and return. The hero goes on an journey, emerges victorious in a disaster and returns residence modified or reworked.
“Joseph Campbell was a theologist and spent all this time finding out all these completely different religions, determining what the widespread theme was. It ended up being this hero’s story,” NGHTMRE explains. “I wrote the music earlier than we began creating the precise storyline for it. I wrote in response to the steps of that Hero’s Journey. I usually felt I actually recognized with the story once we had been going by Icon [Collective music school] speaking about our personal lives and the way it utilized to every part and seeing your self on a journey and combating these fears and conducting these duties to get to wherever your bliss is, no matter your objective was. I felt it was a narrative that lots of people may relate to.”
NGHTMRE performs at his “Into The DRMVRSE” live performance on the Pink Rocks Amphitheatre on April fifteenth, 2022.
The universe-building of DRMVRSE will prolong far past the darkish corners of the album.
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“We tried to attempt to tie all of the music into this story and create a present as effectively,” NGHTMRE says. “A part of the need to create this album was for the present as effectively. Elevating the present from only a DJ set to love, ‘This can be a present. That is an expertise’ and it is not identical to, ‘I’ll go hang around and rage,’ which, you realize, it’s also that. It is enjoyable, it is a occasion, it is a cool expertise, but it surely’s one thing that is slightly extra elevated.”
“I would like it to be a visually immersive expertise,” he continues. “I believe a variety of the exhibits that we go to are a variety of overstimulation: one million issues happening directly. There are 99 lasers and 99 of this and that. We’re attempting to actually program a variety of moments the place it is solely lasers or solely lights or a cool second of solely visuals. Every second within the present is much more thought-out and deliberate. There are timecoded parts and issues like that the place we’re syncing movies that we have made and placing slightly extra time into these parts.”
So why did it take NGHTMRE eight years to launch his first studio album? In any case, the DJ has been collaborating with the likes of SLANDER, Dillon Francis, Zeds Lifeless and The Chainsmokers nearly from the soar. The arrival of DRMVRSE concludes an extended, high-speed and typically strenuous race by the digital music scene.
NGHTMRE performs at his “Into The DRMVRSE” live performance on the Brooklyn Mirage on July 4th, 2022.
“It type of simply felt like a pure development for me. I moved out to L.A. to be a producer and to make music. I went from this zero-to-100 of bedroom-producer-to-getting tunes performed out and instantly happening tour,” NGHTMRE remembers. “It obtained actually busy, actually quick. I’ve at all times had an inclination to make all completely different sorts of stuff. I like all completely different sorts of genres of EDM and completely different sorts of bass music. I’ve taken issues year-by-year and it at all times type of made sense to place out singles or EPs.”
“As soon as I obtained these years of touring underneath my belt and spent extra time understanding precisely what I felt just like the NGHTMRE sound was, it simply felt like a pure time for me to cease [the cycle of touring and quick releases]. I used to be feeling fairly drained and burnt out from touring and being on the highway on a regular basis in 2019,” he provides. “My plan was to take this time without work to put in writing an album. Clearly, when COVID occurred it grew to become a pure break and I used to be like, ‘Properly, I am simply going to start out cranking away at it.’ It was very nice to get again within the studio and write music when I haven’t got an inventory of issues that I’ve to perform within the studio. There have been so few days the place I may simply go in and be like, ‘What do I wish to do at the moment? I will do that.’ It was at all times like, ‘Okay, I am residence for 3 days subsequent week. I want these two days within the studio and I must get this combine performed.’ It took slightly little bit of the enjoyable out of it for some time.”
NGHTMRE.
Koury Angelo
DRMVRSE was NGHTMRE’s escape from a fever dream of touring and infinite releases. It was a fruitful cycle, however one which drained him. What began as a three-month break in the end lasted 15 months.
The album is the bounty of a affected person, well-nurtured seed.
“It was considerably extra therapeutic than I used to be anticipating it to be,” NGHTMRE stated. “I believe in my thoughts I used to be like, ‘Man, I want three months off, six months off to sit back and work on an album.’ A 12 months and three months, I used to be like, ‘Rattling, I nonetheless want a while off.’ It was very nice attending to spend time mountaineering exterior and having fun with the free time and doing issues exterior of music that I wanted for thus lengthy. It was extraordinarily therapeutic to get again within the studio and simply hang around.”
Hearken to DRMVRSE beneath and stream the album here.
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