mvm.

\\Ok, Computer! Everything Everything bridge the gap between actuality and artificial with a sublime sixth: This is Raw Data Feel.//

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“Is that Kevin in the car? He’s a cabbage like me. He’s Obama in the streets, but he thinks he’s Osama in the sheets. I said, “Hey, do you think you’ve got everyone under your control? When you haven’t got anyone, anyone at all.“”

-Shark Week, EE

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To err is human: From their AI-derived RE-ANIMATOR album that eclipsed during the pandemic in the height of 2020, we assumed that the virtual invites to those innovative hologram concerts may be long gone – but turns out that they were even more inspired with a robot-induced future.

Supercharged with an AI robot remixing its own lyrics, RAW DATA FEEL comes at its most powerful and most invigorating during a time for a band who were beginning to turn stale.

A band not too perplexed with just releasing albums the old-fashioned way, frontman Jonathan Higgs and co wanted to ultimately explore new paths to envision striking songwriting. Where RE-ANIMATOR dissipates at a saddening lull with the difficulty of encapsulating such an album in a live setting, RAW DATA FEEL soon begins to feel like the band’s “fulcrum.” A tighter grip on the band getting exactly what they want to get across.

The four selected for single offerings were fantastic on their own. Teletype, I Want a Love Like This, Bad Friday and Pizza Boy bring a new delectable experimental quality to an approach of re-examine, adapt and explore. Abuzz with their star qualities from buzzing synth lines to mesmerising bass mark-ups, it personifies the very essence of being human while organic and artificial take shots at each other.

How can an album with remarkable starting stature possibly keep up? Startling, the album does so with equivocal tact via hopeful assortments of Jennifer and stylist hip-hop variations with both Shark Week and My Computer. Simply put, it is a marvel pop-gold giant that may become one of their favourites among the fans.

Every song unmatched to its counterpart, Raw Data Feel is a thematically empowering spark plug of relevance and understanding during a generation awash in anything but static feel.

The wheels are turning, the cogs are burning for this one and yet, there is little to no errors abound in this release, despite it being their sixth. Whether it will top the stalwart efforts of Get To Heaven in 2015 – arguably the bands’ best release from a commercial standpoint – is probably another one for Artificial Intelligence to answer.

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Favourites: Bad Friday, Jennifer

Least: HEX