The U.K. jungle queen Nia Archives rocks the L.A. massive!
Dive into the middle of the rave in VR! Stg it feels like reliving the BEST set I’ve ever been to (only with slightly pixelated vision).
Watch on YouTube
Best for Questies, Pico ppl, & flatscreens
Watch on DeoVR
Best for PC VR users. D/L DeoVR free on Steam
But if you just wanna watch a flat screen (not as cool) version, here you go:
BEST. SHOW. EVER.
Majority of my life I’ve kinda been a mostly one-genre person (Hip-hop). Like, yeah I’ll listen to the cousin genres (rnb, soul, whatever RATM classifies as, etc) and some of its elders (jazz, funk) but for the most part, hip-hop has been a large part of my core identity.
But during lockdown, with nowhere to go but online, I began my VR diving journey, eventually finding myself attending raves and parties in VRChat where I would make new friends and discover new (to me) music. Thing was, circa 2020 VRChat raves were with almost exclusively electronic music (EDM, house, dnb, etc). I was lightweight familiar with Chicago house cause of my time in the midwest during college, but for the most part I was brand new to that whole side of the music spectrum. I would’ve never had imagined that many years later, it’d be virtual reality that would lead me on my electronic music journey. I think the easiest bridge I can connect for my path from hip-hop to electronic music goes like this:
Hip-hop > Grime > [some VRChat event that played UK grime & dnb] > drum n bass > [Beat Saber edm song packs] > modern house > liquid > jungle > breakcore
I’ve made it a personal mission this year (2023) to get my ears better attuned to dnb as that’s what I’ve started to orbit around. Cause with hip-hop, I can hear a song and immediately pick apart its influences and references down to region or a single person. But with most other genres, all I can tell is “I think I like that.” So I went on to look up on Reddit classic dnb albums I should check, and of course, that led me to its elder genre, Jungle.
Some call her a jungle pop artist, some call her the queen of this era of jungle. But we all know her as Nia Archives, and the algorithm gods brought me to her during my dnb/jungle digging. I fell in love with her music on first listen. She puts her Jamaican x English heritage up front through the UK sound that is Jungle. Soulful melodies, thoughtful lyrics, smooth singing, all over electric jungle riddims. Like, how could you not love this?
And it was incredibly fortunate that my wife Phina found out the friday of Halloween weekend that Nia was playing TONIGHT. As a couple in their 30s, it’s not often we’re motivated to party at the drop of a hat (especially without a Google cal event blocked out) but YO. For the queen? say less.
This is Halloween (weekend)
We already had plans to watch a live performance of Nightmare Before Christmas, so of course my oldhead hypebeast ass gon bust out the LRG Dead Serious hoodie for the night.
Stellar performances by the O.G. cast! But soon as that was up, the wifey and I Lyft’ed outta there to the Regent. As we got in line, saw some drunk youth arguing with the bouncer tryna talk his way back in, but that bouncer was like “NOPE. HAVE A GOOD NIGHT.” Mans didn’t just take the L, he tried to plead to the other bouncers like “can you believe that guy?” Very obvious the puti-boi wasn’t used to not getting his way. Other bouncer was like, “oh nah he was going easy on you.” Hah! Incredible the cordiality between these gentlemen. In downtown of all places too. Had it been any other type of event dude woulda got decked by then. This is social progress yall.
Kuya’s first jungle set
Ok. Maybe it was cause Nia is my first jungle artist that I’m a legit fan of, or maybe cause it was my first live jungle set I’ve attended IRL (VRChat that honor goes to a HEI$T event); but swear to Hari Seldon, this was easily the BEST show I’ve been to in years. God I was SO HYPED for every song she dropped, despite having heard almost all the mixes from various YouTube sets of hers I’ve watched. Seeing it live was just unreal!
Plus I figured out halfway which bartender had the heavy pour, yoooo my throat was blown out from all the yell-singing-along I was doing, which embarrassingly got captured by my Vuze camera…
Capturing the experience, not the performance
I’m not gonna go too long about the virtu-capture (new phrase I’m tryna coin) because I’m looking to make a short video about this concept. But in case I never get around to it; I feel like in VR, the goal is to experience, not to just witness. Unfortunately, for virtu-video, there’s no interaction involved so you’re forced to just witness. However, there are ways to shoot to make it feel like you’re within the experience itself.
I’ve seen many other live-music virtus where the camera is just pointed at the artist stage, with no (or very little) view of the audience. And I get the idea; simulating being front-row or even on-stage with the artist, getting a full unimpeded view. But then what exactly are you capturing? You’re capturing an artist performing to the audience beyond the camera; the camera is no longer part of the audience, it’s just a camera to be ignored.
I think that’s a misstep. Unless the artist performs directly to the camera and nothing else, I wouldn’t feel like that front-stage crowdless view represents “me in the front row.” Instead, it makes me feel like “I am a floating camera pointed at a musician.” It’s these very perspectives that while it might seem ideal, actually works against the immersion factor and breaks the experience-building. You’re being shown, not experiencing.
Anyways, I say all that to say that despite my poor Vuze XR being shit at low-light, watching the Nia Archives virtu I feel like I’m really there, back within the crowd, just with pixelated eyesight. Oh man. What a show, what a night. I’m so glad to have captured that! Looking forward to recording other live events I attend; hopefully after this year’s black friday/cyber monday, it’ll be with a better camera so the virtus don’t feel like you got wild astigmatism. Hope you enjoyed, thanks for watching & reading. And as always, stay immersed.
