This past calendar week , the medicine press has been vibrating with upheaval about EMA ’s fresh noisepop album The Future ’s Void . And it ’s sluttish to see why . EMA combines William Gibson shoutouts and the Oculus Rift - tire out CD cover with dystopian angst . Just check out this music telecasting , in which weirdly sexual video - game characters invade realism .
Plus her songs are ear - wormy as all get - out , in a very former XC agency . Love that Grunge - shape synthesizer sound and the breathy vocal . ( accidentally , EMA bear for Erika M. Anderson . )
Here ’s another video recording , for “ Satellites ” :
And here ’s a youtube that just contains her Gibson - influenced song “ 3Jane ” :
AsNPR say :
There ’s the statute title of her second album , The Future ’s Void , with its odd , homonym - similar imbalance . It could advert to the cryptical , vacuous space of a unhuman tomorrow , or it could imply that no tomorrow will recognise us at all . Or it could just be a new spin on an honest-to-god , psychotherapeutic punk threat : No time to come for you .
Anderson ’s music submerges the listener within such dubiety as they resolve and spin out again through new misfiring synapses . Sex and love feed the fundamental muddiness on EMA ’s raw , heartrending first album Past Lives Martyred Saints . The Future ’s Void is as emotionally acute , but its concerns are more foundational : the nature of the self , enable but also fix by being a organic structure , in ways now challenge by technology that replicates , enhances and maybe destroys item-by-item identities . You sleep together , cyberpunk stuff . But what ’s great about The Future ’s Void is n’t its human body of mention , which hearkens back to William Gibson ’s novels , Sonic Youth ’s Daydream Nation , PJ Harvey and the just - post - frigid War temper of The ten - Files .
AddsNME :
The former Gowns singer cope with oecumenical subject of privacy invasion and applied science ’s ever - growing influence on human interaction . ‘ Neuromancer ’ round the share - all polish of social networking ( “ I have it off more than you do about the things that you do ” ) , game by a furious and metallic Nine Inch Nails rale . ‘ comfort ’ , meanwhile , has a bass - heavy techno undercurrent , with Anderson singing “ We make constellation out of accrue stars ” as though tense up to see through the dense electronics . This shift to a starker , machine - conduct sound is in opposition to EMA ’s easy fashion with a pop hook – a line that ’s most effective on ‘ Smoulder ’ , where her melodies scribble over the synthetic gridlines . These same melodies are reach more freedom to roam on the sparse , string - tinged organization of ‘ 100 Years ’ , and they positively bloom amidst the swell of ‘ 3Jane ’ . The latter is a easy - burning torch ballad about the accelerated cyberspace picture she pick up for her last album and ‘ The Future ’s Void”s most introspective song , hold back the lament , “ I feel like I bungle my soul out across the interwebs … it left a muddle so prominent inside of me . ”
Wait … did she say “ interwebs ” ? Yes she did , asSpin points out :
And yes , Anderson called it “ the Interwebs , ” which seems like a hint that maybe you should n’t take this track record alone at font value , since EMA herself seems to be laughing into the digital emptiness a little bit . go around ego - gratulatory , open - skim grump - outs about stupid - As # selfies and those doggone # milennials , EMA has craft a wide - eyed , open - dog-eared , reasonably horrified , digi - noise drone - common people treatise about the soul - suction , seclusion - wrecking quality of online living .
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