The last time I wrote about a song called “Unspoken”, it was Four Tet’s epic, organic, sprawling masterpiece. This one is much shorter, less intense, and somehow more synthetic sounding, despite the obvious presence of live instruments.
Maybe it’s because I was recently watching clips of one of my favourite robot movies of all time, but listening to this track, all I can think of is robots. I can picture a robot wearing a beret playing the soothing organ that opens the song. An older, rusty robot strumming the gentle guitar chords. A shiny, chrome-plated robot DJ cradling a set of headphones and nodding his robot head.
So if (check that; when) I build an all-robot band, this will be the first song we perform.
What makes this a beautiful song:
1. The percussion. It’s glitchy and punchy, and somehow makes me think of robots fighting.
2. The high keys that come in at around 1:12. This is the tiny robot ambulance coming to pick up the injured robots.
3. Having sat on the 1-4 chord progression for the first half of the song, it switches to an ascending sequence of chords just after 2 minutes. Kind of hopeful. Makes me feel like the robots will learn to get along after all.
Recommended listening activity:
Making something low-tech look more high-tech by wrapping it in tinfoil.