The Reality of the Virtual, the debut album from NTSC, draws its title and chief inspiration from Slavoj Zizek's likewise titled 2004 video lecture. Zizek affirms that we are constantly bombarded by ideology, be it through politics, advertising or even popular culture at large. Ideology is virtual, but it makes itself real by manipulating our perception and programming our behavior.
NTSC take Zizek's ideas and apply them to the ideological feedback loop that western culture has become, enthralled as it currently is by its feshitization of 1980s pop culture. The 80s are everywhere; not just in the endless stream of Hollywood remakes and rehashed TV shows, but in the return of aggressive capitalist values and political models that many of us assumed were dead and gone.
NTSC have used the ongoing collapse of history as an opportunity to pay critical homage to the sounds and styles of the Me-First Decade, creating an amalgam of new wave, hip-hop, punk and glam rock infused with a vaporwave-esque sensibility. It is chiefly this which sets NTSC apart from other synthwave acts - instead of reveling in nostalgia for an imagined past, most of the songs on the album have a sociopolitical urgency to them that is competely at odds with the genre. By juxtaposing backward-looking pop with a forward-thinking mentality, NTSC hope to jolt their listeners into a greater awareness of our present predicament.
