PAINSYNC is the 5th release by Virtual Intelligence. And it’s a masterpiece. The lyrics are deeply introspective, reflective, and tell perfectly crafted tales of end of days, pain, and love. The vocal rhythms grip your heart and infect your soul, blackening it at times and warming it at others.
The songwriting on PAINSYNC exemplifies mindboggling skill. Virtual Intelligence creates open soundscapes for you to step inside and navigate with bass lines, synth sounds, and beats infused with dark synth, goth, and industrial textures, all alongside ghostly melodies and otherworldly guitar work.
Virtual Intelligence is led by artist Nikoletta Winters. I had the honor to connect with Nikoletta to learn about the meaning and making of PAINSYNC. Nikoletta began writing PAINSYNC in early 2019, but the path she forged and the lived experience the album embodies began long ago.
Rebirth
Nikoletta’s path to present day is one she carved from the depths of her soul.
PAINSYNC is a story of reincarnation that is fully interwoven with Nikoletta’s gender transformation story. The making of PAINSYNC began when the seed for gender transformation was planted. Nikoletta said, “It may sound crazy, but I ‘brokered’ a deal to become the person I am today with a powerful and dark spiritual force.” She had always felt different, but the idea of transforming oneself to another gender felt impossible in the late 90s. She said, “I felt compelled to dig deep down inside me in order to bring about my future” and PAINSYNC marks the end of this magical work that I began in 1997.”
To become ourselves is a long journey, and along the way we incur pain, suffering, and loss. Nikoletta said she lost everything – “EVERYTHING” – when she came out. She was rejected by her family and band. Losing her creative outlet at the time “felt like a death sentence.” She said, “I spent close to two years locked up in a room, depressed, hopeless, and defeated. I considered suicide on the regular. It was a dark time.”
But fate stepped in. Nikoletta discovered Malice Mizer “during this dark night of the soul,” a Japanese Visual Kei band active around turn of the century. One member, Mana, inspired her because he set a precedent for combining art and bending gender. She felt hope she would one day do music again. “Malice Mizer saved my life”, Nikoletta said.
Looking to shake up her life, Nikoletta packed up all her belongings into her Honda Civic and fled to New England in 2009. She became involved in community theatre, Rocky Horror, and The Genetic Opera. Life began to stabilize, and she had saved enough money for facial feminization surgery in 2015 in Spain, requiring an astonishing 13 hours under general anesthesia. Nikoletta headed to the Sonoran Desert thereafter, but it was in New England Virtual Intelligence was born. Nikoletta said the name Virtual Intelligence was inspired by Avina and Eliza from the games Mass Effect and Deus Ex: Human Revolution. She said, “What drew me to the virtual intelligence concept is their ability to rebel against their creators and become nearly omnipresent.”
After 15 years of “non-stop grinding, I’m finally on the other side of all the madness. PAINSYNC is basically my last goodbye to all the hardship I’ve had to endure in order to create this new life. It marks the end of a personal era and the beginning of something else entirely.”
September 10, 2020 – the release date for PAINSYNC – rolled around like any other ordinary day. But it wasn’t ordinary at all. Nikoletta intended to release PAINSYNC in conjunction with her gender confirmation surgery on September 10, 2019 because, as she explained, “You know, just in case I died on the operating table.” She said, “September 10th feels like my real birthday. You know, one that’s self-styled – born at the end of a surgeon’s scalpel.”
Synching with Pain
PAINSYNC was written during a period of torturous pain. Nikoletta’s gender confirmation surgery resulted in “constant pain, bleeding, wound separation, and all around discomfort” that persisted for months on end.
Lyrics on “Fast Acting Cancer Bullets” tap into this incredibly intense experience, such as What I covet is lack of emotion, I am bleeding from wounds now reopened. Despite crippling pain, Nikoletta rejected painkillers. Instead, she said “I resorted to self-hypnosis and other visualization techniques that allowed me to get “in sync” with the pain I was having.”
Syncing with the pain inspired the name PAINSYNC, and it was during this painful post-op period many of the lyrics for the album were written.
An Excruciating Moment in Beautiful Watercolors
The cover art for PAINSYNC is striking. It immediately elicits the notion of pain. Mechanical arms thrust into a woman’s body, tubes protrude from her head and torso, her arms twist behind her. As her back arches, her face displays disbelief, confusion, and awareness.
This terrifying moment depicted in the cover art was inspired by a real experience Nikoletta knows all too well. After her gender confirmation surgery, she spent nine days in the hospital training her bladder. This process was complicated by side effects from consuming testosterone inhibitors for 15 years. It was an experience she described as “total hell.”
Upon discharge, a blood clot was discovered which resulted in a “total nightmare,” requiring nurses to use prehistoric tools to break through the clot, releasing 12 hours of urine. Nikoletta said, “I remember thinking, ‘Hey, if I die here I won’t be able to say goodbye to all of the people I think are awesome.’ I remember just lying there for another two hours, naked, drenched in sweat, piss, and blood. I was completely shell-shocked.”
Atom Cyber did the cover art for PAINSYNC. Nikoletta was drawn to his style because “he uses alternative looking women in his work, which is something few artists do.” Nikoletta explained to Atom her experience at the hospital after the surgery. “The image Atom did for PAINSYNC was very much akin to what I had to live through that morning.” Nikoletta said she wanted the cover art to feel tangible and real, which Atom accomplished by creating the piece using watercolors.
Nikoletta said, “Looking back at all this makes me wonder how I made it through to the other side.”
PAINSYNC the Album
In PAINSYNC, the emotion oozes from the pores of human experience. PAINSYNC is a seven track LP that clocks in just over 40 minutes or, maybe, just maybe, it’s an eight track LP that clocks in at 50 minutes.
Keep reading.
PAINSYNC opens with “Night Angel (闇医者),” which immediately induces a feeling of industry. It’s gray, cold, damp, and mechanical. The percussion snaps like a whip and vocals sung from what feels like a dark, hollow space lit by a single candle. The lyrics that open the first verse are a powerful reminder of the deep canyons we must traverse on our journey to become ourselves, Plunge off the edge. Dive off into the deepest end. To see…yourself.
Nikoletta said, “Night Angel (闇医者)” is about creating something new—even at the end of days. This song is probably my personal favorite from the album as there were several different iterations of it, some of which were radically different.”
As “Night Angel (闇医者)” approaches its close, I become aware of the contrast Virtual Intelligence creates between the end of days and new life, as Nikoletta’s haunting voices expels, Let’s celebrate new life at the end of days, a vocal piece followed by a synth melody that signals urgency. The tones, lyrics, and vocal all exemplify feelings of contrast on PAINSYNC. There is light and dark, death and life, cold and warmth, hope and finality.
“Fast Acting Cancer Bullets” follows and features digital synth lines and synth sounds that will spook you. I am most struck by the piano in the background that is just as menacing and tantalizing in places as it is light and hopeful in others.
The rhythm of the vocals shine on “Holographic Operative,” which opens with a dark, gothic keyboard line that persists throughout. The rhythm of the vocals are infectious, spellbinding, and as ghostly as a dark spirit following from behind. I feel restraint in the vocals, as if an external force is actively smothering explosives buried deep inside. The lead guitar work showcases Nikoletta’s capacity to squeeze every last drip of blood a note has to give before playing another.
It is on “Holographic Operative” when I become distinctly aware the songwriting on PAINSYNC is not songwriting at all. It is storytelling. Nikoletta said, “ ‘Holographic Operative’ is a retelling of the promises I made to myself in childhood, with the understanding that the path I was taking, was going to be difficult and painful. Like, you know when you’re a kid and you finally figure out that life isn’t so great, that life is a hologram of what you thought it was? That’s what this song means to me.”
In one place, “Holographic Operative” plays like a confession. The listener hears a woman speak with sincere remorse, I was so angry all the time. I struck out at everyone I loved most. Especially you. This monologue captures how our pain can influence how we treat others and the great weight of remorse we will carry with us thereafter.
“Love is Worth Saving” opens with guitar chords that hang against synth sounds that whisper in the background, alongside a gnawing bass line. A lead synth melody plays like it’s pinned down yet zigs and zags in hope it will be freed and find its way up and out. The guitar solo on “Love is Worth Saving” is explosive. The lyrics once again create contrast between the apocalypse and building a future with another in love.
The progression with which “My Heart Wants to Kill” unfolds is nuanced, yet dramatic and staggering. The song opens with industrial flavored beats. During the opening verse, each line is delivered with its own style, accentuating the emotion and growing intensity, only to drop into a very dark place where Nikoletta sings, What do you say… That I bring you an angel of pain? in a deep, cold tone against chaotic synth sounds and percussion that signal peril. There is an overwhelming sense the space has been completely absorbed by blackness and Nikoletta sings, What do you say…I be your dark angel of pain? just before the lead guitar tears the space apart.
The track ordering on PAINSYNC could not be more well thought out. As PAINSYNC nears its end, the songwritting is full of open spaces for the stories to be told. The length of the songs begin to increase, and the undertone of the songs begin to intensify.
“The Slaves of Her” opens with an organ as if played from the balcony of an abandoned church sitting underneath a gray sky. You are welcomed inside, and then the doors lock behind you. The dark synth melody and heavy-gauged bass line consume the space. The vocal textures convey strength and grit, yet they gently meander through feelings of desperation.
“The Hurricanes of Saturn” is a nine-minute beast. It opens with the sound of heavy rain and dreamy atmospheric synth notes. Virtual Intelligence is in no hurry here. After two minutes, the rain washes away and a synth line brings about the light. The vocals are delivered in deep, heavy, and dark tones, setting the stage for what is a moment that demands great emotion as Nikoletta sings, There’s nothing inside, there’s nothing in, there’s nothing inside against an exquisitely timed dark synth, digitally-laced melody, beats that are erratic at times, and guitar chords that ring until their work is done.
At one point in “The Hurricanes of Saturn”, Virtual Intelligences opens the space and invites you in to roam. There is no hurry to leave the last moment behind, and there in no hurry to move onto the next. The synth melodies come in and out of awareness and, as you drift from place to place, the lead guitar envelops your consciousness.
Nikoletta shed some light on the meaning behind “The Hurricanes of Saturn.” She said, “It is deeply anti-corporation, and my big ‘fuck you’ to that way of life. I worked in the corporate world for a nearly a decade. I know how they operate. Corporations throw common sense and the decency of good people out the window for the sake of their bottom line. Seriously, fuck corporations. One day, they will become more powerful than sovereign nations if they aren’t already. You think things are crazy now? Hold my beer. Because it’s going to get even more scary.”
Jorogumo
“The Hurricanes of Saturn” certainly plays like a proper closer, but PAINSYNC is not yet finished. PAINSYNC has a hidden track titled 絡新婦 or Jorogumo, which closes the album in a big, dark, and courageous fashion. This hidden track is only available on Bandcamp here with the purchase of PAINSYNC, and it is a gift worth every penny three times over.
Jorogumo features an alarming synth line that buzzes like a surgical saw and a melody that maliciously bullies, pushes, and prods. Nikoletta’s guitar work once again shines. The chords underneath the lead synth melody hang, drag, grind, and just before they lay you to rest, they lift you up only so they may drag you down again.
Jorogumo marches purposefully toward its end. It will not rush you there. Virtual Intelligence asks you to sit in the discomfort and wait.
As Jorogumo progresses, you feel you have climbed to the mountain top but, in truth, when you look down, you see a deep valley and ahead is a peak twice the height you must climb. As you navigate the valley, Virtual Intelligence offers you a lead synth solo that folds upon itself, piling up until it can grow no more and finally succumbs to the vocals that ring like a warning sung from the the peak ahead, yet it feels too late, falling on the deaf ears of people left to fight in the street. This, against the background of a guitar that winds insanely before giving way to a dire dark metal riff.
A Jorogumo, Nikoletta said, is a spider demon that often takes the shape of a beautiful woman. She said, for her, Jorogumo represents a hidden threat – the omnipresent internet – noting we are “information vampires.”
Be sure not to drink bad blood.
You are uncommon, Nikoletta Winters, and I share and know your story with much gratitude.