Molto Ohm — Reality Pills

Reality Pills, the second full-length album from Italian-born, Brooklyn-based artist Molto Ohm, is sonic pharmacology for the overs(t)imulated—a quasi-ambient pop album that explores the psychic toll of life lived through screens.

Nodding to philosopher Jean Baudrillard’s concept of hyperreality, the album explores how digital representations, once reflections of the real, have become more vivid, more compelling, and ultimately more “real” than reality itself. Reality Pills offers a prescription that is both critique and salve: immersive, reflective, and subtly disorienting.

Each of the album's nine tracks is named after a fictional medicine: Vantorinex, Clymperid, Zorvitol, Lunovarine, etc. These invented substances act as affective remedies, mimicking the promises of real-world pharmaceuticals and algorithmically tailored experiences. Some tracks feel warm and hopeful, offering ambient calm and a glimmer of sonic hope, while others introduce dissonance  and dark emotional undercurrents.

Medicine, like technology, is never neutral: it can soothe and poison, heal and harm. We seek calm, but consume chaos. We retreat for relief, but find ourselves embedded in a never-ending feed of stimulation — political spectacle, wellness rituals, AI-generated comfort — all united by a permeating sense of unease. Technology becomes both mirror and mask, comfort and control.

To capture this dichotomy, Molto Ohm set out to refine the sound-collage approach of his live performances, defined by layering his recent work with long-collected synth ideas, corporate messaging, environmental sounds, choir fragments, and pop songs, into a deliberate studio form. 

The album was built from a core palette of hardware synths, guitar run through pedal effects, and a wide spectrum of voices —a choir comprised of Molto Ohm’s layered vocals, voiceovers, artificial voices, archival recordings, and guest contributions from producer and multi-instrumentalist Jachary (L'Rain, Tasha), psych-pop project Tanners, guitarist Aditya Chatterjee, and touring pianist Puck (King Princess, SZA).

Whereas Molto Ohm’s previous album FEED felt agitated, overclocked, and crowded, Reality Pills is the aftermath, a numbed exhale. From artificially-narrated affirmations about the power and importance of the body (“Trivaxon”) to the uncanny recital of Dove™ product names over eerie sonic atmospheres (“Zorvitol”), Reality Pills dwells in the blurred space between critical resistance and commodified comfort, where human and digitized voices meet. Sounds are muted, and voices sing melodies of longing and love over beds of atonal synths and unsettling laments. Are they saviors, or just sirens’ calls?

Reality Pills moves swiftly through this contradiction, building up a pharmaco-digital environment where emotion is outsourced and human intimacy is filtered through synthetic layers. This is ambient music for a world where care is commercialized, authenticity is commodified, and the ‘Real’ is presented to us muted, curated, and softly lethal.

Reality Pills is available via Soap Library in digital and cassette formats on February 27, 2026. Each tape comes with a (pre-scratched) 1970s-era lottery ticket — a sliver of hope in the form of a randomized reward. What are you hoping to win? Maybe you already have.