“Volatile” - Nick Vivid
Photo Credit: Artist EPK
Nick Vivid doesn’t just make music — he engineers his own sonic universe from scratch. With Volatile, the New York City electronic lo-fi funk auteur turns his DIY ethos into an act of radical self-expression, merging glam rock flamboyance with basement-built futurism. It’s an album that sounds alive — unstable, electric, and gloriously unpredictable — just like the city that inspired it.
Loosely conceptual, Volatile feels like a diary from Vivid’s early New York days — nights spent chasing dreams under flickering streetlights, friendships forged in chaos, and the kind of heartbreak that only hits when you’re young and unguarded. “These songs are me looking back at a time when everything felt raw and uncertain,” he says. That sense of rawness pulses through every track: the record hums with movement, sweat, and vulnerability.
Vivid’s DIY wizardry is all over this project. The man literally built parts of the studio himself — custom synth filters, homemade pedals, and even preamps modeled after Giorgio Moroder’s Helios console. The result? A sound that’s retro and futuristic in equal measure. It’s disco dragged through the backstreets, funk stripped to its circuitry, and glam refracted through a haze of tape hiss.
Photo Credit: Artist EPK
The album’s opener, “Too Toxic,” is a kaleidoscopic statement piece — a lo-fi funk groove that spirals into a wall of shimmering synths, like Prince jamming with LCD Soundsystem after a night of too much caffeine and self-doubt. “Volunteer” follows with bittersweet grace, examining generosity and burnout with a melody that aches beneath its groove. And the title track, “V-O-L-A-T-I-L-E,” is pure catharsis — written in one inspired burst, it feels like Vivid shaking the walls of his past to see what still echoes.
Raised in Buffalo on his father’s soul and blues records and his mother’s obsession with Bowie and Queen, Nick Vivid was practically destined to live somewhere between grit and glitter. His career has been a long-form experiment in identity and sound — from underground cult bands to his acclaimed solo projects — but Volatile feels like his most personal and fully realized statement yet.
Mixed entirely to tape, the album hums with analog warmth and imperfection, that human shimmer modern pop often polishes away. It’s futuristic nostalgia — a time capsule from a future that never quite happened.
Volatile is Nick Vivid at his most fearless — a love letter to New York, to imperfection, and to the endless, chaotic pursuit of sound. It’s sweaty, soulful, strange, and utterly addictive. Somewhere between a disco inferno and a midnight confession booth, Nick Vivid proves that being volatile might just be the point.
“Volatile” is available now on all major streaming platforms
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