Out now via independent channels, DOPAM1NE is the latest digital detonation from Seattle-based electronic auteur Us3r (pronounced “User”). Dropped on April 30, this new full-length album is a throbbing, genre-slicing body of work—a relentless joyride through synthetic highs, shadowy lows, and the emotional whiplash in between. If dopamine is the brain’s reward chemical, Us3r’s version feels more like a glitching slot machine: euphoric, erratic, and designed to keep you spinning.
Opening with the title track ‘Dopamine’, the album lays its cards on the table early. Shimmering synth layers collide with haunted vocal phrasing, creating a disorienting pulse that captures the core contradiction of modern pleasure: too much, too fast, and never quite enough. It’s both a sugar rush and a systems crash. “It feels like the ups and downs of addiction,” Us3r explains. “A total mind fuck when you’re feeling excitement and despair at the same time.”
That sense of emotional volatility threads through the entire record. On ‘Angel’, one of the album’s standout moments, Us3r leans into a darker, more sensual palette. Warped vocal treatments and swirling synths bleed into each other like oil on water. It’s industrial slow-burn at its sexiest — all smoke, shadows, and heat. Elsewhere, sharp pop instincts emerge through layered distortion and alt-dance grit, keeping the listener locked in a state of ecstatic tension. The album feels like a mirror to late-stage capitalism’s emotional fallout. It’s music for the overstimulated soul: scrolling endlessly, spiraling quietly, dancing anyway.
As with his previous work, Us3r is both provocateur and confessor. A multimedia artist and genre chameleon, he folds synthwave, industrial pop, and alt-electronica into a signature sound that’s as danceable as it is disorienting. What sets DOPAM1NE apart is its visceral immediacy. The LP is not here to soothe you. It’s here to feel — sharply, deeply, and all at once.
