*track titles have been slightly amended to avoid automatic hyperlinking We join ₳§ᗐM̶R̳ once again. Last year, bringing out two…

*track titles have been slightly amended to avoid automatic hyperlinking

We join ₳§ᗐM̶R̳ once again. Last year, bringing out two incredibly immersive and sonically impressive projects in Data System Convergence and [MEMORY-OVERLOAD] (we reviewed both here and here), ₳§ᗐM̶R̳’s technical prowess and eye for conception were near faultless. And now, within the first month of the year he installs himself into the mainframe of 2020 with The World’s First Uploaded Human on the increasingly popular label Hairs aBlazin‘.

We start with a dissonant and deflated drum sound proceeded by bright and tinny piano notes and the sound of running water. Three divergent sounds coexisting in the same landscape. The piano sound improvises, providing a beautiful and inviting tune full of glissandos and trills. Though the haunting drum noise helps us to remember that the artist is a master of storytelling, and that the stories are not often pleasant or simple.

lost-to-the-digital breaks into song with an epic echoing melody. It reaches out to what sounds like an unlimited vista. As if we sit on a veranda somewhere intangible in space time watching great lines of energy pulse and run into the unseeable horizon. A voice appears meshed into the steady percussion. The drums are almost an inner monologue of determination. ₳§ᗐM̶R̳ begins to patch in a fractured voice, The intonations of which are human enough to provide an organic feeling, but corrupted enough to sound like a mere remnant of humanity repeating a string of notes like binary code. A smouldering guitar sounds in the back of the mix, and we are brought into a sound that is remarkably different to what the artist has provided before.

trapped-in-a-dream replays eerie bell chimes over and over, creating a terrifying groundhog effect as if we are a character stuck in a constant stasis of panic and euphoria. Drums that sound like something deep within an alien ship shoot past us as we are trapped in a constant freefall.

A gargantuan pad sweeps the soundscape like an alien scanner, as a heartbreaking piano echoes into the nothingness on no-longer-myself. A cold and heartless electronic drumbeat dips and dives from numb lows to scratchy highs. The piano part is an incredibly expressive moment on the project and one of the most gracefully orchestrated moments from the artist so far. So much emotion is poured into it, as the drum sequence travels alongside almost completely adverse to the sadness and sorrow emblazoned on each note.

A thick pad phases up and down, a neutral sound lacking the morose tones of the melodies before. Another steady beat begins, the percussive aspects of each track almost acting like a crutch upon which we are able to absorb the amorphous and complex synthesised buffet that ₳§ᗐM̶R̳ provides. artificial-loop slowly ebbs away.

death-hacker begins as if we are making our way through a club in a seedy underworld hideout. The bass seems to shake the walls around us. It feels as though we are pushing our way through crowds of twisted humans and holograms to try and get to the exit.

An almost saxophone like sound reaches up hopefully, only to flutter slowly downwards into deeper more gloomy tones in how-to-cope-with-my-new-online-consciousness. We find ourselves back at this endless precipice alongside ₳§ᗐM̶R̳. Off notes and drums beat in the civilisation from which we have made our way away from. A glitched voice travels near to us only to float away on the air. Complex creatures float past and around us as everything sounds like its moving in slow motion. A muffled tune provides a salve from the detached and calculated world we find ourselves in. The digital landscape creaks and bends. ₳§ᗐM̶R̳ is the string-puller, the seraphim above, shifting and warping our perception as we hopelessly feel our way through. He instills a calmness with the long track. A voice begins to speak expressively. Speaking of war, nuclear threat and humanities future. Though it’s possible it is merely a canned speech from a nearby historic information booth, riling off events that everyone around us already knows. We are filled with all the apprehension and ennuis of this created world, a world aware of the present society’s wrongdoings and conflict. But the air still vibrates with this beautiful flowing sound. The glitched voice comes back around, as if its a signal from the city we have charted our course away from.

cyber-lounge fades in with choir vocals and exploratory piano scales. A heavy-handed hi-hat sequence chatters above the voice, welcoming in a watery bass drum and snare. The song, though short, brings us away from the existential intensity of the song before. We’ve come away from that precipice now and it almost feels as if we are in the lobby of some grandiose, secretive gathering. Eyes Wide Shut in a half-physical/half-digital plane.

transcendent-garden begins with muffled low-frequency movement and clicking, high-pitched melody. Notes of explicit anxiety are succeeded by laser-like sounds shooting into the ground to the right of us. Have we reached the city limits? The part of this semi-simulated world that we are not allowed to tread? As if we’ve tried to look past the garden that we inhabit. It certainly seems that way as more screeching sounds and deep alarm noises build around us. Different warning systems from the different factions of the digital city patching into our exact location.

where-do-i-belong closes the project with a labyrinthine loop consisting of revolving drums and guitar notes. There’s no doubt that we’ve been caught by whatever authority has a hold over the digital world.

The World’s First Uploaded Human speaks to feelings of detachment from identity and uncertainty of surroundings that the title suggests. ₳§ᗐM̶R̳ takes another few steps forward in the exploration of the human’s place in an increasingly digital world. With an evident talent for synthesis and composition, this particular EP is more skeletal than ones before, but lacks none of the carefully constructed narrative and texture that has come to make the artist such a fantastic force in recent years.

Listen in full/purchase on cassette here: https://hairsablazin.bandcamp.com/album/the-worlds-first-uploaded-human