Ultra Q dropped their new beautiful and electrifying single "VR Sex" on January 31, premiering it on BBC Radio 1 with Jack Saunders, along with unveiling their debut album My Guardian Angel will be released June 9th via Royal Mountain Records.
"VR Sex" is the follow-up to the band's previous pop banger, "I Watched Them Go." Though both singles are bred from the same album, they're very distinct. While "I Watched Them Go" features more or less pop synths and soft vocals, "VR Sex" steers more towards Ultra Q's punk roots with thundering drums from Chris Malaspina to match wailing guitar riffs from Enzo Malaspina in conformity. Jakob Armstrong's crystal clear vocals provide illuminating melodies to perfect the chorus that grasps you into an adrenaline rush.
“’VR Sex’ was the last song I wrote for this album. By the end of the writing process, I really didn’t have any idea what this record was going to be. Stylistically, It was mostly leaning toward shoegaze / dreampop with a few outliers here and there. When you write this many songs over a long period of time, eventually your taste is going to change and your interest will wane. This is the point where I rediscovered my love for MCR, specifically the second album. It deals with the period of time shortly after a close friend nearly passed in a car accident.” - Jakob Armstrong
Ultra Q’s debut album My Guardian Angel was produced by Chris Coady ( TV on the Radio, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Beach House) and it offers a deep sonic palette to match Armstrong’s artistic ambition. Wildly vacillating between widescreen pop-punk ("Klepto", the impeccably titled "VR Sex"), romantic new-wave ("Rocket", "I Wanna Lose"), and shimmering synth-pop - "I Watched Them Go"), the album displays Armstrong’s songwriting talents—along with the musicianship of Kevin Judd and brothers Chris and Enzo Malaspina—conceived and recorded for maximum impact. Pre-order My Guardian Angel here.
Emotional growing pains, sleepless nights, the ethereal allure of romance, and the notion of sound being so closely attached to memory are all wrapped up in clever guitar interplay reminiscent of the band’s formative influences, but delivered in an identity all their own. The words are attached to feelings we think are going to slip away from us in the fading and tarnished pallor of adulthood; truth be told, those feelings emerge just as freshly the older we get.
Jakob adds about the album, “I don’t think there is a direct narrative to the album. But I can speak to the place I was in when writing. The record is about loss, and isolation. It’s about dealing with traumatic, life sized events that you don’t know how to confront until you do. Working on this project was my way of dealing with things. I don’t always know how to put it into words, but it’s the process and the feeling that helped me. Whether it’s yelling my favorite New Order lyrics over and over (“Saturday”), or the double time ravaging of the drums in “VR Sex”. As cheesy as it may sound, writing this album was my guardian angel.”
“This is the point where I rediscovered my love for MCR, specifically the second album. I wanted so badly to have an emo ripper on the record but I didn’t really think it could fit. After some demoing, I decided that I really needed to write this song. It deals with the period of time shortly after a close friend nearly passed in a car accident. In a way, this event was the catalyst for many topics on this album and writing about it was an extremely cathartic way to end the album process.” - Jakob Armstrong
As we await Ultra Q's debut album, the band will be on a California tour this March kicking off in Ventura and ending in Frensco. Check out tour dates, My Guardian Angel tracklist, listen to + keep up with Ultra Q below.
Ultra Q Tour Dates:
03/16 – Ventura Music Hall – Ventura, CA
03/17 – Soma Sidestage – San Diego, CA
03/18 – Last Exit – Phoenix, AZ
03/22 – Treefort Festival – Boise, ID
03/23 – Holland Project – Reno, CA
03/24 – Harlow’s – Sacramento, CA
03/25 – The Ritz – San Jose, CA
03/26 – Strummer’s – Fresno, CA
My Guardian Angel Tracklist:
1. Saturday
2. VR Sex
3. Rocket
4. I Watched Them Go
5. Web Web Web
6. Klepto
7. Slope
8. Wrip
9. So Very Emo
10. I Wanna Lose
11. Teether
12. Dark Green
ULTRA Q
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