Who is Virtual Riot?
At 21, Christian Valentin Brunn, better known as Virtual Riot, made the bold decision to leave his home in Germany and move to the United States, where the burgeoning dubstep scene was thriving. In contrast to the limited demand for bass music in Germany, the U.S. offered a vibrant market for the genre, making it the ideal destination for Brunn to pursue his passion and grow his career.
Let's take a step back. Music runs in Brunn’s family, with both parents and his siblings being musicians. Growing up, he followed in their footsteps, starting piano lessons at age six and later moving on to play church organ. His interest in music production began in his early teens when his brother, who studied music at university, introduced him to different music software and hardware. Initially influenced by metal, emo, and progressive rock, he shifted toward electronic music after discovering artists like Skrillex and Pendulum. "I was like, I want to do that too. How do we make those sounds?"
His creative process is driven by both experimentation and emotion. Sometimes new gear or plugins inspire him, but often it's about expressing his feelings.
"I want other people to feel what I’m feeling when they listen," he said. Whether it's to process sadness or create something uplifting, he focuses on authenticity. "I've noticed this approach is better than just trying to write a banger.”
Brunn regularly returns to Germany and other European countries and has observed growth in the electronic music scene, particularly in bass music.
"I saw Rampage (music festival in Belgium) early on, and it's only gotten bigger," he said, noting the increasing presence of artists and larger crowds. Venues that had once downsized their dubstep events are now filling main stages again, which he finds encouraging.
The US has seen a rise in drum and bass and speed house genres. This growth is encouraging to Brunn given that when he started out making electronic music he created several drum and bass tracks. His latest album features two drum and bass tracks, a nod to his roots in the genre.
"I’m stoked to add that back into my catalog. It’s nice to know people here get it and appreciate it,” said Brunn.
With the growth of electronic dance music as a whole, different sub-genres have also seen a rise in popularity. Genres like Speed House, Hard Techno, Drum and Bass are growing and cross-pollinating, creating even more different styles of electronic music.
Stealing Fire the album
Set for October 18th, Brunn will be releasing his fourth album “Stealing Fire” featuring sixteen tracks and collabs with artists like Rezz, Raven Gray and others..
Originally ‘Stealing Fire' was planned to be self-published. However after assessing the work load required in addition to making his tour happen, his team and he realized that the album would be better with some help. They decided the place to take the album was the record label Monstercat. Brunn had done remixes for Monstercat in the past, and through remixing songs for AU5 and others, he was introduced to the label.
“So I had those remixes on Monstercat and during that time I just noticed how well Monstercat was working, how organized they were. Only positive memories there,” said Brunn. “Monstercat was the perfect choice. It's just like, ‘hey, let's see if they're interested,’ if they wanna be a little bit creatively involved, if they can take that kind of job off our hands, that'd be amazing.”
Brunn describes the album as diverse and playful. With each song having 2-3 different drops and a variety of different genres and beat tempos included. In addition to Dubstep there's also two drum and bass, two mid-tempo tunes, and two house tunes.
“There's fun, chord progressions. I've been playing with scales for that kind of evil and creepy feeling,” said Brunn…There's the one house tune that is also very colorful and a little Fred again... inspired. A lot of it is just stuff I really wanted to try out. One of the dubstep tunes gets progressively slower every 8 bars in the drop, kind of like a metalcore song where they have their guitar breakdowns.”
Outside of grabbing inspiration from other artists, sounds, and musical techniques, Brunn pulled inspiration from the book Stealing Fire. This book focuses on how humans are always searching for ways to alter our state of mind in some way or another. How humans crave this altered state of mind to escape the feeling of existence is pain. The album explores the feeling of wanting to change that experience of pain into something else.
“Obviously, it can be psychedelics, but it can be so much more. It can be sports, music, dancing, or any form of expression,” said Brunn. “Anything that puts you in some form of rush.”
The book and album use the symbolism of Prometheus stealing fire from the Greek Gods and giving it to humans heavily. This symbolism resonated with Brunn because he has always been very open with his approach to music. Teaching people about his process and techniques via YouTube and Patreon. He craves being able to share the fire he holds with others. Brunn wants to hear more cool music and share the enjoyment he gets from making music with everyone he can. This desire to steal and share the fire is represented throughout the album.
What is a VJ?
Brunn has made the choice to have his Visual Jockey (VJ) Carmen Aguirre aka VJ Neurite, join him on stage, a tactic that used to be more common than it has been in recent years. Now, many people don’t even know what a VJ is; or that there is someone whose entire role is to control the visuals for a DJ set. For the last seven years, the two have worked together to find the best method that worked for them. For them, it’s being on stage together where they have line-of-sight communication.
“If we need to change something halfway through or if I need to skip a couple of songs we didn't plan for, previously I had to text her and hope that I have signal,” Brunn said. “Now it's just lean over and be like ‘we're skipping the next 3’, makes it a lot easier.”
Many DJs time-code their visuals or use a feed sent backstage from the booth. Time-code is when visuals are synced to the music via computer programing. Aguirre and Brunn do not use time-code. Aguirre times everything by ear, every visual that is used cues based on hearing certain parts of the music. If Brunn plays faster or slower than normal then Aguirre has to change the speed and match the visuals to the beat that he is playing. This is normal and often is done from behind the scenes. However, being on stage, Aguirre finds it easier to make the adjustments directly.
Why the choice to do it this way as opposed to how others do?
Aguirre: There are a couple of reasons. One, the timecode line can be a little bit unreliable and can cut out. We started doing it, with time code for a few shows, and we had so many issues that it was more reliable to do it manually. Since we've worked together for so long, and I know all of his music so well. It also adds more uniqueness to every show because we can actually modify what we're doing live. So if he changes something up or if I want to test out new transitions or a new way of chopping different visuals, that's a lot easier to do than if using time-code. You would need to realign everything and he would have to play the exact track the exact way it's always done.
We asked a lot of bigger artists that use time-code and if they know any tricks, and it seems that it's the same issue for everyone. It can be really unreliable, and bigger artists would have multiple backups in case something fails, and it's not worth it for us.
It's also just way more fun for me that way. I have so much more fun and being able to bust these visuals on time is a flex. Right? And I feel good after I've done that.
It's not that you're babysitting anything, you still have to do a lot of work for time code, which I think is something that a lot of people don't understand, but it is different.
Is this something you see more DJs switching back to as having a VJ on stage with them?
Brunn: It's not done in dubstep often. I've seen it done a bit more, in different genres.
Aguirre: If you think more about stuff like indie festivals where you have weird electronica artists that do crazy stuff on stage. You'll see that it'll be a lineup with the DJs and then there's another lineup that are the VJ's because some people might just go for that because they do similarly crazy stuff. I've seen where they'll have the projector and an oil film and it's being projected onto a wall live. And it's a lot more about that part of the live show as well. And, yeah, that's more represented in those scenes.
Outside of you performing together, what are you hoping to see from talking more about it?
Aguirre: Honestly, it's not even about, “every artist should bring their VJ on stage.” Some VJs would never want to do it from the stage, and everyone can do it however they want. The goal is that recognition, that there is some other artist responsible for the work that goes into the live performance. More appreciation for the people who help put their shows together, I would love to see VJ's on lineups one day in dubstep. It'd be really sick to see it happen one day.
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