Band back stories are usually pretty straightforward affairs. People meet at school, bond over a few favourite artists, form a band, and make music together. There are a few variations on the theme, but that is generally it. But this is the world of eNuminous and Archimedes, and so things are bound to be different—as it turns out, very different indeed.
The back story behind their latest album is not just a complex, time-hopping jaunt but also acts as the creation myth for an entirely different band at the same time. It’s a little complex but goes something like this.
When eNuminous & Archimedes were looking for the perfect venue to record a live show, they opted for the London Hippodrome, and why not? It’s a great room. Only, they decided that the best date for the show would be, you guessed it, 30th February 1912. One hundred and twelve years before their current chronological location.
Having time travelled back to that point, as you do, they performed the concert, recorded it and buried the master tapes, which were retrieved once everyone was back in the present and which were used as the reference material for the album you have before you. But, here’s the twist: having subjected the audience to a taste of the musical future, they couldn’t allow them to stay in their own time line and change the course of musical, artistic and cultural history. So the band did the only sensible thing: kidnapped the audience and brought them back to the present day. One of whom was a young lady called Miss Millie Sievert, who, as regular readers will already be aware, has now formed her band and has even been reviewed on this site.
And that is either an accurate report of actual events, a strange flight of fancy on behalf of whoever is behind the moniker of eNuminous & Archimedes, or the plot to a long-lost Micheal Moorcock novel from the Dancers at the End of Time series.
Well, whatever you believe to be the case, you are faced with a strange album, one of the few that involves a blend of AI sonic generations and human composition, time travel, digital manipulation, avant-garde arrangements taken to new heights and mass kidnapping. Having reviewed many of their albums now, this has to be one of eNuminous & Archimedes most avant-garde, but time travel will do that to you, I guess. I mean, the jet lag after a ten hour flight is bad enough.
Put On Your Goggles We Are Time Travelling is the logical first full track, a collection of blurred piano lines and cascades of notes that seem to have backed up behind each other, which in turn finds itself fading into more delicate singular chiming notes. Hemoglobin pulls a similar trick in the percussion department, and Thrilling The Hippodrome wanders into the minimalist territory of, say, Sir Phillip Glass, with more space and atmosphere than solid instrumentation and, ironically, feeling more focused and purposeful because of it.
The beat-driven Angelique In Revolt gets closest to what we might recognise as a traditional song structure in places, but even then, it’s not that close. Tingle In My Giraffe Alerting Me To Ladybugs (Anthropocene Era Climate Shift) I feel I must mention merely for being the best title I’m likely to hear…well, until the next release from this band.
As I have noted before, the importance of eNuminous and Archimedes isn’t in their ability to write songs but in the fact that they pose questions of great importance. Questions such as what is the role of AI in music making, both now and in the future? Is it even still music if it is AI-generated? And if so, should the composer be retitled as a sonic engineer? Will the Royal College of Music start running courses in the Python programming language. and will grade eight Mojo programming secure you a place in a decent, regional symphony orchestra.
This time out, they throw in additional questions just for good measure. Is time travel possible? Is music made this way, retro or futuristic? And, given that his music is both a new release and over a century old, will it feature in next year’s proms?
Answers on a postcard and sent to
eNuminous & Archimedes
c/o The White Star Line
RMS Titanic
North Atlantic.
Please submit your answers before 15 April 1912 for reasons that should now be blatantly obvious.
Play the full album HERE