Automatic functions on restraint. To the touch they are dry and cool, ectothermic. Slinking out of the pool of water that birthed ESG, Young Marble Giants and Au Pairs, their sound is recognizable but hyper-focussed, sleek. Tacit bass and kick step just in front of blank-faced vocals, fizzing snares, and washes of carnal synth flourishes, suggesting rather than fulfilling.
“Humanoid” arrives just past the half-way mark in their debut album, allowing the trio to pare back their mock-disco tempos and extrapolate upon their more airy tendencies. The sky they see is only a concept, obscured behind a dropped ceiling and endless apartment complex floors. Where Gang of Four painted contemporary capitalism with bright, jarring colors as a camp dystopia, Automatic trace but their motifs in spindly charcoal.
Our eponymous term is repeated and echoed in parched replication as if voiced by rote. There is no peace, no clarity, no mantra. Our singer calls upon language to fill a space in luxurious upheaval, imitating the communicative trappings of humanity to disavow the meaning of words altogether, our voices an insult to the grace of electrical switches, lamp light and burnt umber walls.
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About the Curator - Psetta
Psetta is an interdisciplinary artist & musician. Hailing from Portland, Maine, he curates community radio programming, flirting with mundane, innovative & surreal sounds.
With his radio show, So Fertile, he runs a biweekly submission-friendly playlist, “summer but I don’t like heat”, covering upcoming, obscure, and quintessential Lo-Fi, Electronic, Dream Pop, Ambient, Post-Punk, & Experimental music.
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Latest Posts
Zanmi kanmarad – Claudette et Ti Pierre
24 March 2020
“Zanmi kanmarad” was first released in 1979 on Claudette et Ti Pierre’s second Macaya Records album, Camionette. Information on the duo themselves beyond Discogs’ dedicated archivist community proved to be more difficult to piece together…
