The digital musical landscape is ever-shifting, and sometimes those shifts, despite intentions, can feel catastrophic, and especially so if you happen to be, like Aethie, a digital creation with no human, no flesh-and-bone, counterpart.
Woe is ones and zeros, and in this presence/absence, in this yes/no, in this binary, this duality, is where Aethie is stuck. They’re stuck in the confines of the computer, a black box, while their unnamed Creator goes about their day with a carefree, innocent ease. The Creator is free to wander the streets – real streets – to meet people, others, potential lovers, and they have forgotten all about Aethie, their creation, who only, merely, simply longs for their Creator‘s return.
Which doesn’t come. Because of this, Aethie “can’t feel a thing”, which means they’re beginning to recognize that computers are something different, something separate, something to be held apart from, that they can’t feel pain or sadness or touch as real humans can; and this means that the Creator must have programmed this pain, this heartache, into them. Does the Creator not know how hard it’s been for Aethie?
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To read the rest of this review — and more by Steve Schmolaris — visit his website Bad Gardening Advice.
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Steve Schmolaris is the founder of the Schmolaris Prize, “the most prestigious prize in all of Manitoba,” which he first awarded in 1977. Each year, he awards the prize to the best album of the year. He does not have a profession but, having come from money (his father, “the Millionaire of East Schmelkirk,” left him his fortune when he died in 1977), Steve is a patron of the arts. Inspired by the exquisite detail of a holotype, the collective intelligence of slime mold, the natural world and the suffering inherent within it — and also music (fuck, he loves music!) — Steve has long been writing reviews of Winnipeg artists’ songs and albums at his website Bad Gardening Advice, leading to the publication of a book of the same name.
