Artificial Life – eNuminous & Archimedes (reviewed by Dave Franklin)

At the risk of repeating myself, eNuminous & Archimedes is more than just about the end result of making music. Whilst most bands/artists/acts/sonic scientists…I don’t know what to call this musical excursion… focus only on the end result, the final product; it seems that my enigmatic friend is more interested in the process. It’s the “better to travel well than to arrive” adage applied to music making, though perhaps better described as, “It is better to invent new systems of transport, head into the unknown, without even a compass, and off-road it through places which you won’t even find on the maps, not yet anyway, than it is to arrive.” Which makes him the Dr Livingstone of music. I presume!

Or, in simpler terms, this is an artist inventing new ways to make music. Yes, all manner of synths and samples, files and genre-hopping are going on here, but that’s old hat. What eNuminous & Archimedes brilliantly bring to the table is the idea of AI being used to generate music and, in the case of the focus of this album, vocals. 

Some would argue that such an approach is what is ushering in the death of creativity, but the people who say that sort of thing typically play in lousy rock bands, have terrible haircuts and even worse dress sense and still think that Stairway to Heaven is the pinnacle of music. I would argue that the technology has already been ushered in, so why not see what it can do? Rather than let AI do all the fun stuff whilst we sit on our phones playing Candy Crush, why not take control and create man/machine interfaces, work in harmony and see what our imaginations and their unlimited scope can come up with? Right? Right!

And, what it can do, in the right hands, is startling. And eNuminous & Archimedes is/are the right pair of hands. Songs such as Big Log, (which is sort of a cover of Robert Plant’s solo release…sort of) give us an indication of the sonic grounds being tested – a chiming and charming neo-classic piano line, parts of it almost seeming to reference Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition, slowly subsumed by an AI/a capella interface (AIcapella?), distant, jazzy sonics and futuristic noise—a journey from the sublime to the ridiculously inventive.

Insanity (I’m Living on the Street) is the sound of disembodied, robotic voices embedded in romantic era classical grandeur, a combination that is both fascinating and thought-provoking; Stewie Leaves The Known Universe is a strange blend of spoken word narrations, ominous sound clashes and just the slight vibe of socially conscious soul, as a musical interlude written for Dr Who: The Musical. (Has anyone done that? I only ask because I know just the person to sort out the musical score.)

And if She Blinded Me With Science is a mind-bending reference back to Thomas Dolby, a short interlude played on radio interference and sung by a cyborg on ketamin, All The King’s Men reminds us that eNuminous & Archimedes can make fantastically accessible instrumental music whilst making albums which are technological, academic and sonic acts of revolution. Indeed, a track that could have cropped up in a David Lynch movie had their paths ever crossed, which would have been something.

This is not music designed for chart position and mass consumption; it’s more important than that. This is an academic experiment in where music goes next and, more importantly, how it gets there.