What does VIQ sound like?

Hazy electronic music that has more in common with a dreampop band production than a dancefloor anthem.

The review of ‘Nothing Is Real’ by VIQ

Nestled in the corners of Paris is VIQ, the moniker of producer and musician Julien Pannetier. He provides a melting pot for various electronic music to wear the wardrobe of an indie music scene. The result is always something that sounds like it could be a late-night club background soundtrack and score a Life Is Strange game soundtrack at the same time. VIQ’s music is often effortlessly cool and that’s because of how each track flows in its own way.

For this new EP, the title track kicks us off with a wonderful mixture of genres. It swings from chill-hop verses with lots of lo-fi electric piano and fuzzy vibes to drum and bass chorus melodies in a flash. It’s dynamic, fresh, and also quite ethereal with drifting female vocals coating the music in a dissolved musical monoxide. Moodier is ‘Shadows’ which is a numbing chillwave track with a crisp beat to it. Part of the fun with this track, and most of VIQ’s music is uncovering tiny layers of sound that move the mood of the overall track somewhere. There’s plenty to discover in this short piece. Following that, we get the driving pulse of 80’s synths for a synthwave murder mystery with ‘Ghost’. Some synths emulate a steel drum and they are mixed into the wirey keyboards and night sweats and dark alleyways that the rest of the synths and muddy drums conjure. Perfect for your cyberpunk noir soundtrack.

‘Embrace’ takes us back to pacey drum and bass beats furiously passing by numbing lo-fi synths. Everything except the main beats sounds like it’s been pushed through a musical Gaussian blur. The guitars, keyboards, sonar sound effects, and vocals have a Vaseline smear across it and are running at half the speed of the drums. Its a cool effect that brings me back to VIQ’s effortless flow of his music. VIQ can create a river of sound that just works. With ‘I see’ it is all about the way the guitars and synths slide. Some of it slides with pitch shifts or tape effects, but in the swirling haze of all those effects, the drums swap from a slow burn to a crisp, satisfying dancefloor hit. It doesn’t stay long enough to make you comfortable, as if this whole EP refuses to form a solid mirage of sound, but it is a satisfying intense finale to the track. That lets ‘Lowtone’ close out the EP with blissed-out rubbery bass synths, hollow vocal oohs, lonely keyboard tones and a detuned emptiness.

If lo-fi-infused dance music was made and produced by Daughter – you’d get something like VIQ. Julien produces his electronic music like he has recorded a shoegaze or dreampop album. That means lots of smooth reverb, smudged instruments, and hidden depths to what’s been recorded. ‘Nothing Is Real’ sounds effortless but that takes years of craft to get there. It brings electronic music to alternative music fans in a way that makes it just weird and emotional enough to let the genres mesh. It is a great place to hang out.

Recommended track: I See

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