Vijunns – Collapse

Vijunns is the audio-visual project of LA-based music producer and art director Jeremy Raskin. Since 2018, Raskin has explored the terrain between ambient and techno, carving out a space beyond rave euphoria and the contemplative depths of electronica rich with lucid imagery and immersive storytelling. This unity of sound and concept reveals new territory for Raskin on “Collapse”, a self-described ‘soundtrack to the end of the world’ that explores the tensions defining our current socio-political epoch. Raskin continues to expand his post-IDM palette with modular and 90s-era digital synthesis, lacing the sonics of his prior works with an undertone of darkness, which lends a weighty grit to his trademark sound. Rather than indulge in IDM’s solipsistic introspection, he instead applies its sharp edges and diffuse vapors to render a world in disarray. “Collapse” unfurls cinematically, establishing an expansive, desolate space. On ‘Industry’, sinuous chords shift and simmer while booming bass and insistent percussion apply the pressure. ‘Undone’ introduces soft, tender bodies; delicate melodies and gentle timbres winding through the ruin. ‘Tessellation’ brings us somewhere sacred and mythic, where supernatural sounds and abstract rhythms induce a sense of transcendental purpose. Ultimately, “Collapse” arrives. Heart rending, gut-wrenching, potent, and final. As the credits roll, we are treated to Auragraph’s remix of ‘Industry’, where the prolific darkwave mainstay morphs the original into a slab of club-ready breaks which maintains every ounce of the atmosphere established over the course of the LP. Raskin’s visual sensibility is a statement within itself. The artwork provokes meditations on mass surveillance, emergent technologies, and the infinite feedback loop of content that primes a world teetering between a liberated, high-tech future and an alienated, inhuman dystopia.