Fetish fascinations and life on the road: Andrew Clinco on the new VR Sex record ‘Hard Copy’
While Andrew Clinco might be best known for his otherworldly constructions as Deb Demure in Drab Majesty, his work in the duo only accounts for a small portion of his artistic scope. A lifelong fan of niche, putrid punk, his project, VR Sex, remains the vehicle for him to fully delve into this side of his creativity, with the make-up, outfits and synths replaced with white shirts, black shades, and the menacing growl of a Gibson Invader.
The band’s new album, Hard Copy, is nothing short of brilliant. It is the first since Clinco opened himself up to a collaborative project with full-time members, and naturally, this change sees the project refine itself. Together, they’ve produced a collection of ten tracks that analyse the liminal space between reality and fictional renditions of it in gritty, effects-drenched glory.
Undoubtedly an artistic triumph, it was no real surprise that Clinco felt buoyant about the new record. Calling from across the world in Los Angeles, he admitted to me over Zoom that he was “finally starting to listen to it again” and enjoying it for what it is after a while of not doing so. This shift in attitude emerges after the arduous process of being fully immersed in its intricacies when recording and mixing. Clinco notes: “A good six or seven months of no listening will actually get you to listen more objectively. I’m relearning some of it now for live shows. It’s nice to revisit it.”
Delving into the minutiae of what can make a musician’s perspective on an album change during the recording process, the VR Sex leader explains: “There are mistakes that you hate. There are all sorts of things about it that you absolutely hate. And then, you forget that you hate those things because unless you note them or they’re always glaring at you, all the things you hyper-fixate on go away. That’s kind of the beauty of time.”
I was actively trying not to compare Clinco’s two most prominent projects. Still, they have a definite spiritual connection in exploring the darker side of life, not to mention their leader’s baritone. However, their sounds are clearly distinct, as evidenced by the naturalistic psychedelia of Drab Majesty’s 2023 release, An Object in Motion and Hard Copy. While Clinco responds that he’s “still not very objective” because it’s his art, he notes that some lyrical themes are more bizarre in VR Sex.
Clinco states that he was making punk before Drab Majesty, but for a long time, he wasn’t seeking a network to find players to play with, describing himself as “a bit of a loner”. He just happened to segue into the acclaimed duo as part of his general process. “I’ve been doing it this whole time, but a lot of people don’t know that.”
Of scratching this continual itch, he said: “My normal brain sounds more like VR Sex than Drab Majesty.”
Opening the project up into a full-scale band was influenced by Clinco discovering a collection of musicians who were not only willing to play with him but understood the assignment and brought something new to it. “The lineup right now is pretty cool,” he says before adding that he was tired of solo work and playing in a duo. Citing his earlier post-rock outfit Marriages, which Emma-Ruth Rundle fronted, he says he missed playing in a group with loud and heavy music for the fun of it.
Clinco’s is of course correct; VR Sex does have a stellar lineup. Not only does it feature himself under the moniker of Noel Skum but also the “awesome” vocalist Aaron Montaigne, formerly of cult San Diego hardcore acts Heroin and the “formative” Antioch Arrow. Then, there’s “super talented” guitarist Mike Kriebel, an accomplished sound engineer who has made a mark across Los Angeles. He co-produced Hard Copy with Clinco and handled most of what he calls “the technical heavy lifting”. Finally, there’s Marley Jones behind the kit, who Clinco describes as “one of the best drummers I’ve ever played with.”
As a drummer with “pretty high standards” himself, Clinco is particularly aware of how the instrument can make or break a project. He states that Texan Jones exceeded expectations and comments that he brought much to Hard Copy. “They say the drummer makes or breaks the band,” he told me with vigour. “I found that to be totally true because it’s the propulsion; if it’s dragging, if there’s no groove, it’s really hard to listen to. Noisy guitars aren’t gonna get in the way or bring the band down the way a shitty drummer will.”
Hard Copy is brimming with compelling themes, with dirty money and lust two that instantly spring to mind from Clinco’s sordid tapestry of tales. He offered more insight into this element and explained the unsettling philosophical topic underpinning the group. It’s about to get suitably Black Mirror.
“I’ve always just had a fascination with the idea of replacing the sexual experience in a virtual way,” he says. “Sex is a point of contention for a lot of people; it’s a thing where people who are feeling repressed act in irrational, miscalculated, misguided ways because that part of their lives can’t be filled. And, the idea of creating a virtual or tactile experience in the sense that we’re talking about, like real dolls and stuff like that, if that can be replicated in a one-to-one ratio… it might really change the world in a lot of ways.”
Now that the theoretical basis has been covered, I wondered if any real experiences fed into the album. It brings to mind fictional renderings of Los Angeles and its weird underbelly that have been covered in countless media, from the films of David Lynch and Brian De Palma to the lampooning in the Grand Theft Auto franchise. “There’s definitely some of that on there,” Clinco says, pointing to the track ‘Squid Row’.
It’s a response to the housing and homeless crisis in his native Los Angeles: “It basically describes a homeless revolt where homeless people start killing landlords.” It sounds severe, but it’s not without reason. This is due to landlords monopolising living spaces for the people who need them, sitting on un-rented empty properties, refusing to adjust the price of the apartments: “So, they’re not really resting at their true market value, and there’s people that don’t have places to live.”
Yet, in proper form, this candid and essential commentary is instilled with genuine weirdness. Clinco reveals that it also relates to the true story of an octopus that was smart enough to escape from captivity in a zoo, but that he changed the animal in question, so the title became a play on words. However, the salient point lay beneath: “It’s the idea that the song is an inversion of that; the people on the street are going to actually find their way into these spaces, destroy the landlords, and reclaim space.”
Clinco wouldn’t even call himself “deeply political”, but being reminded of things daily when driving through the city he grew up in is absolutely “devastating”. Things right now are just so terrible, with communities forming in what he characterises as “every crevice and corner of the city”.
He states: “You look at these people, and they’re basically yourself just in some dirty clothes. The concept of the crazy, dirty homeless person with shit smeared all over his face walking down the street with no pants on is antiquated. These are straight-up people just like you and me; there’s really only a couple degrees of separation. These folks can’t get a fucking house for anything even remotely affordable. It’s really insane. It’s so expensive here.”
Moving things on from the heartbreaking social-political morass we waded into, I wondered what Clinco’s favourite song on Hard Copy is and was surprised to hear that no one had asked him yet. ‘In Great Detail’ and ‘Jenny Killer Glue’ were mentioned as personal highlights, with the slow goo of the latter his pick for the top spot. As he was heading to rehearsals later, he remarked that the group hadn’t played the material live yet and that “sometimes, my favourite song to listen to is not necessarily my favourite song to play”.
As a concluding point, Clinco expressed that songs evolve over tours and often become better than on albums. Demonstrating his disposition as a true artist who’s always moving forward, he concedes: “It’s wild. When you return from the tour, you’re like, ‘Oh, man, I wish we did it like this on the record.’ It’s always like that. I almost hate all the album versions of all my songs by the end of the tour, but it is what it is.”
