Frankie and the Witch Fingers – Total Reset
The collective fascination with AI, documented so widely over the past couple of years, may just say more about us than about the technology itself. One fact is that chatbots, no matter what billionaire has shoved money into the project, are lousy, barely work and provide false information regularly. They are worse than your worst employees. But that doesn’t matter.
Frankie and the Witch Fingers have picked up on the twitchy nervous energy coming from the other side of the ring. Humans are frightened of AI technology. But why? Primarily because we know what a bad job we’ve done about everything on this planet. And just like a cult expecting to be flattened by some divine punishment, we await the chatbots to take over.
It’ll be a while. AI tech is still a lousy hype-bomb. But what if it were all true? Frankie and the Witch Fingers create a psych-punk fantasy in which the robots are about to take over and are ready to share their propaganda campaign with the world. The music sounds like a hyped-up DEVO. It’s wildly entertaining. But just like the prophecies made by those 80s luminaries didn’t come true, don’t expect these to be any different.
WACK – Heart In What? City
I like to feel confused. There’s so little nowadays that will do that. Everything’s covered in big signs that tell you where to go and at what time. Everyone you meet instantly tells you what they do for a living and what they want for Christmas.
And if you’re as big a lover of confusion as I am, modern music might offer an escape. But don’t go looking for advice from your radio, YouTube or television. That’ll just play the hits. You’ll end up swimming through the same swamp of familiarity.
It’s much better at the bottom, down where the bizarre, unsettling, or strangely alluring meet. It’s much better to take a chance on discovering hipster record collectors like the ones that make up the Canadian dance-rock guerrilla unit, WACK.
WACK’s “Heart In What? City” may be written about painfully cool, aloof people. But it just sounds like the songwriters might be describing themselves. The dance grooves are inspired by German electronic music and British shoegaze. It’s music for the coolest party in town in a club that holds 10 people and in which you can’t get in without reciting a stanza from your favourite German poet. The standards are high, seats are few, but it’s still much better down here.
