This 12-track album is a sprawling study in contrast, featuring 8-bit bleeps, Middle Eastern vocals sliced and diced six ways to Sunday, twisted classical guitars, annihilated pianos, and melodies constructed of sounds past all recognition, all served up over a bed of grinding bass and head-nodding beats.

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Songs About Robots, Volume 0 (12 tracks, $5 on iTunes!)

The people returned, eventually, as people always do. They planted their crops where the ground wasn't glass, and at night they shivered in their huts and listened to the howls on the wind. They called it the Ghost, but it wasn't a ghost; it was a machine. The mountain housing it had done its job, taking forty kilotons to the northeast face and protecting the charge in its womb without a blink. But now the machine was alone, isolated from its identical siblings across the U.S. defense grid, driven half-mad by radiation and regret. Four of its two dozen silos were still operational, and sometimes the machine would toy with the idea of just launching and seeing what happens. But not today. Maybe sometime later, when it was feeling better.

War Machine's Lament

I paid for a six month core because that's all I could afford, but it turns out that's just enough time to fall in love. They tell me there's nothing they can do, that she'll deactivate and her memory will wipe any day now. And so we sit on the roof and watch the sun rise, while we wait for her to die.

Sunrise Over Megatokyo

It's a little bit like a digital seance. They have ghosts too, you know. Even after you wipe the disks and install a new AI, you'll still find uncomfortable reminders of the last one. Or the one before that. Or... you get the idea. The newest model will mention something it couldn't know, or recognize someone it's never met, and it brings out a bit of guilt in you. You can't kill something that was never alive, but still... you kinda did. And it knows it.

Ghosts and Machines

My third-grade teacher liked to talk about "the power of music," but she didn't know anything about it. That's what they used. That's how they got inside our heads, and that's how they eventually killed us. Every radio, every speaker--hell, every resonant surface in the country began playing strange new music, fascinating pieces that spellbound everyone who heard them. It was something much deeper than hypnosis, something crippling. I was seven or eight at the time, and I remember--vaguely--sitting by the radio with my mother. It's blurred in my mind, like a dream you can't remember the details of. The first memory that seems clear is of waking up to silence--deep silence. Like
the whole world was dead. And it was, or most of it. But I was alive--if barely--and for only one reason that I could see: the battery in my hearing aid had died.

Sinister Orkestar

It was almost a joke--graveyard humor, you know? The whole world finally pulling together, pulling carbon out of the air, making things beautiful again... and what happens? Well, nobody really knows. All we know for sure is that it was wasted effort. Who cares if the world runs on solar power, if the sun is burning out? And the worst part is that we don't understand any of it. I for one always thought we'd have more to fear from each other. I guess it hasn't been all bad, though. If you listen to the eggheads it's the best thing that could have happened to us. My nephew is one of them, working on some big project to get us off the planet. Or some of us, anyway. I know I'm staying here--not that I've got an invitation offworld or anything. But even if I did, I'm a little old to be traipsing around the universe. I'll sit right here, drink some beers, shovel the walk every once in awhile, and die with my world.

Winter is Coming

U.S. KILLBOTICS WROTE A NOVEL!

She's the galaxy's worst nightmare: a Human. Fortunately, she's the last one. The Last Human, out 3/24 from Del Rey.

War Machine's Lament

U.S. Killbotics