The Big Picture

Zambomba

Love Over Entropy - Tyranny Of Distance

Buy/stream: https://kompakt.fm/releases/brainwave_technology_12

Michael Mayer’s latest EP, Brainwave Technology, comes at you purposeful, stealthy and sly. It’s a glorious left turn for the redoubtable producer, one that sees his typically lean and lithe productions buffed to a metallic, futurist sheen. There’s a gleam in the eyes of tracks like “Brainwave Technology” and “Alpha” that speaks of serious fun, of the intersection of the pleasure zone and the frontal lobe.

“Brainwave Technology” itself is informed by Mayer’s deep dive into the thorny terrain of artificial intelligence, transhumanism and posthumanism. Inspired by reading German philosopher Richard David Precht, Mayer found himself heading down the “proverbial rabbit hole,” as he describes it, “watching hours of YouTube material by self-proclaimed prophets of these ‘inevitable’ changes to come.” Never one to be taken in by the egotist’s dance, Mayer’s cynicism about the whole endeavour is tempered, a little, by the deeper questions that these figures gesture towards: “Is it really an evolutionary step that man and machine become one? Or is it rather a marketing plot by Silicon Valley billionaires?”

On “Brainwave Technology”, Mayer plays the charlatans at their own game, turning their logic against them by exposing the fruitiness of their ‘visions’. “I chose irony as my sword with which I chopped off some quotes from some of those batshit crazy prophets and self-promoters,” he explains of the drooling psychobabble he drops in the track’s lacuna. There’s a sense of humour here – how could you not laugh at these hungover egotists? – but there’s levity too, a sense that Mayer’s using sound to expose the contradictions and double-speak at the heart of these half-formed ideas. It’s a Burroughsian tactic, to slice into the heart of the voice to see what hidden truths surface.

It was Burroughs, too, who once said that “when you cut into the past, the future leaks out”; Brainwave Technology cuts into the logic of the futurologist to leak out the messiness of modern reality. On “Alpha” and “Gamma”, Mayer seems to conjure up the stark, ominous music that’d soundtrack a science fiction reinterpretation – or preinterpretation – of our modern malaise, all funereal wreaths of electronic noise and clatterboxing beats. As the EP resolves with “Device For The Young At Heart”, Mayer’s questions are piling up: “Do we want to become immortal and live on as a download? Do we really give up on Earth and put all our effort into colonising Mars?” There are no answers, of course, but plenty of imaginings-to-be. Brainwave Technology soundtracks both dystopian and utopian possibilities of what could come next.

Michael Mayer - Device For The Young At Heart

Michael Mayer - Alpha

Michael Mayer - Gamma

Michael Mayer - Brainwave Technology

art:cast special | Black Cadmium

There's something about Mike and Joginda's music that catches the attention right away – their flow's probably stronger and faster than any river issues into the sea and there are quite some rivers in their hometown Rotterdam. Joginda and Mike, better known under their artist moniker Black Cadmium, have been involved in the electronic music for years – decades to be precise - in the one or the other way, but it took the both until 2019 to finally get things going for them and craft their forces. From then on the duo's way has known – at least in the eyes of the public – only one direction: up! Releases on Ovum, Naive, Vault Wax or and most recently their Inertia EP on Transient Nature are not only an expression of their success but also show their musical diversity or simply underline the duo's knowledge and understanding of electronic music's origins and roots, something the two find essential in order to grasp the big(ger) picture. Shortly after the release of the beforementioned EP on Transient Nature, Black Cadmium gave Torture the Artist some insights into their minds, lives, (studio) approaches, places to hang out in Rotterdam and how everything culminated into being who they are, what they do and how they deal with matters that concern Black Cadmium. Additionally Mike and Joginda compiled the latest edition of the art:cast special series – certainly as deep and diverse as one would expect and a soundtrack for any state of mind or season. 

Read the interview here: https://torturetheartist.net/2021/10/08/artcast-special-interview-black-cadmium

Artist information
Black Cadmium: https://facebook.com/blackcadmium // @black-cadmium // https://instagram.com/black.cadmium

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art:cast special by Black Cadmium

Interview

art:cast special | Black Cadmium

RADIO.D59B / GOOD VIBES ONLY #15 w/ Adrian Magrys

akstuko

Hard Techno Love - Mike Norman

(Value 3.4) You Didn't Say Anything

Label, booking agency & online record shop

Demo submission: 
We receive a lot of demos every day. Please understand that we are unable to listen to everything. Send your private soundcloud link to: label@kompakt.fm.

Michael Mayer - Gamma

Kompakt

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