I may have said it before, probably using far too many words, but Reduction in Force sounds like the logical reconciliation of the sonic antagonists of the analog/digital war that sprang out of the post-punk scene of the early eighties. It was a time of real innovation, new genres, new musical forms, but there were clear battle lines, and for every long-haired still worshipping the traditional guitar sound, there was a newly shorn punk kid, rewiring keyboards and telling us that the guitar was dead.
“World Full of Echoes” is a marriage made in heaven —or at least San Diego —which drives an unmistakably rock-and-roll guitar through a more electronic landscape to striking effect. Skittering electro-beats grow into a pummelling programmed rhythm, guitars slash and gnaw through the binary textures, and the two worlds creatively collide. It’s a song that echoes with a past that never quite happened on its way to a future that hasn’t yet arrived!
And it is a perfect sound for the song’s theme— a musing and meditation on the counterpoint of art and technology. Can, the song asks, art really exist without a human to drive it? Surely it is human intent, imagination, emotion, and empathy that lie at the heart of any artwork. Without that, can AI or any technology we have trained to make facsimiles really be considered art? Like humans themselves, can art, at least meaningful art, truly exist without a heart to power it?
It’s a big song for big ideas!
