Control Human Delete: The Prime Mover

Science fiction commonly raises important questions about what it means to be human. It also regularly questions the relationship between scientific understanding and ethical behavior. In recent years, science fiction increasingly deals with dystopian settings, places in which the basic structures of humanity have failed and a small band of individuals must discover how to survive. The future, at least in some of our imaginings, is quite bleak.

Control Human Delete is an experimental extreme music band that has been pushing the boundaries of musical possibility for over ten years. Even though they don't have an extensive musical catalogue, their music is consistently ambitious and wide-ranging. Like science fiction, Control Human Delete hopes to raise questions concerning the nature of being, what it means to be human, and understanding the problem of living in a media saturated world. Indeed, two of the songs on this album (parts 1 and 2 of "Continuous Data") deal with these topics directly.

On the whole, I found the ideas this album deals with very smart and engaging, but the music was often harder to enjoy than it should have been. I don't mind experimentation, even a great deal of it, but this album relies too much on synthesizer effects, digital programming, and sampling. Moreover, the songs are way too long (there's only one track on here that's less than six minutes long). The result is a sometimes chaotic array of sounds and musical ideas that becomes overwhelming, even a little hard to process, at times. Some of the tracks had cool opening segments—"Shapeshifting," for example, has a strong opening. Nevertheless, the album as a whole is more an experimental exercise, something that is interesting to consider but not always something to warrant repeat listening.

Track Listing:
1. New Replicators
2. Transporter
3. Continuous Data, part 1
4. Continuous Data, part 2
5. Shapeshifting
6. Earth-like Behavior
7. Recurrence

Added: June 12th 2013
Reviewer: Carl Sederholm
Score:
Related Link: Band Website
Hits: 1794
Language: english

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