“Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep” opens with the protagonist and his emotionally vacant wife discussing the appropriate settings they’ll dial on their “mood organ” for the day to get some wind in their sails. The paradox, in case you haven’t seen “Blade Runner” or “Star Trek TNG”, is that it’s hard to define what makes us human, especially if we can be chemically and algorithmically manipulated like a machine. I wouldn’t dispute Deckard or Data on that point. Not to spoil it for you, but the humanity or androidness is blurred and brought into question with each of them. I don’t know if there’s anyway to make a sad robot happy by playing cheerful music, but I’m susceptible to that sort of mood organ. I practically have my iPod playlists arranged by mood and I can dial into what I’m feeling, whether it’s to pull out of the doldrums or to stew in venom. That sounds bipolar – I have more than two playlists and a broad spectrum of to dial in.
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Monthly Archives: June 2013
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My takeaway from the Coachella and RSD has been to fixate on Yeah Yeah Yeahs and Meat Beat Manifesto. At the edge of my conscious thought there’s a loop of “Acid Again” and “Heads Will Roll” beyond my control. On top of that, another topic, is the big thumping In Silico by Pendulum I enjoyed while smashing cop cars and other public property in Need For Speed: Undercover. I don’t mean to drop names here, but it’s becoming clear that good music is not dead. For a while I thought all creativity had dried out, though it was there all along in some other business model. Forget physical retail stores at this point – when I visited Best Buy today it wasn’t easy to find the single surviving row of CDs after rezoning for vast tracts of iPhone accessories. Out in the wild, in the unwashed back woods of the music scene, there are a lot of innovative, talented and well-produced projects funded in the spirit of democratic venture capital. Continue reading