Photophob - Your Majesty Machine

Photophob's Your Majesty Machine, a new release from Hive Records, reminds me somewhat of Tekniq's album, Compuglobalhypermeganet (tekniq's second album was also released on Hive), in that the vision of the future is one that seems quite benign, with machines working in their quirky way to bring forth an era of utopian bliss for their human overlords (wait, did I say 'overlord'? I mean 'creators' or something more inspiring and less (to use a word that doesn't exist (yet)) dominatorially evil).

With nothing to go on but the instrumental sounds, the song titles and the cd cover, I am left to interpret this music alone.

Yes, the future is bright, and the machine is there to help, whether they be a host of rather large absurd looking 50s TV show inspired creations, like the one shaking the hand of a woman on "Your Majesty Machine"'s cover (a woman who looks a little creepily like my mother from old black and white photos I have seen of her (my mother being a woman who as it happens, also shares a distortedly optimistic view of the future)), or the vaguely playful machine-whore implied by the track title "her sexy circuits" (track 2)( I've got to steer away from my usual bleak outlook and not use terms like 'machine-whore' and use more positive sounding terms like "pleasure-bot". The modern day silicon or cyberskin vibrating vagina (also known by such lovely names as 'pocket pussy' or 'badboy buddy', but I digress) has never hurt anyone, why should we expect its more advanced computerized and robotized version to?). Even the space pirates who hands we musically fall into in track 5 ("in the hands of the space pirates") sound more like good swashbuckling gents, like future-day robin hoods rather than the twisted, borg-like freaks, that full of their vulgar ideologies and distorted robotic 'Yarrrrr mateys', haunt a strangely high percentage of my nightmares.

Yes, the gentle idm blips and beeps and melodies and ambience have lulled me into letting my guard down (or at least so it seems), and then suddenly I am alone in the void, as the CD has stopped without revealing any hostile intent. The Hired Hunter (kilbot) of track 12, who I was very suspicious of before I had heard the track, has apparently functioned properly and serves mankind without a hitch.

Dystopian movies have been proven wrong, there is no HAL, corrupted by the flaws of his human programming, there are no vengeful skin-jobs returning to earth to unleash their destruction upon a cruel humanity. Even the arcade style video games of my youth were mistaken: Robotron doesn't logically conclude that humans are inferior and must be destroyed (a switch that doesn't make any sense to me at all!).

All is well in the future people. We must seek to advance through the horrors of these painful modern times. If we can but live past the end of the American empire and hold on for our lives it'll all be worthwhile, and Photophob has given all of us his personal assurance to this effect!

Squid @ Dec. 2004