Fissionable Mass – Millie Sievert and The Radioactive Five (reviewed by Dave Franklin)

Some art looks for answers, but the best begs questions and, in doing so, starts conversations. Millie Sievert and The Radioactive Five definitely fall into the latter category. Some of those questions are of a fundamental nature, like who the hell is Millie and the gang? A modern indie outfit hiding behind an artificial persona? A studio project that works with found sounds and sourced samples? A time-travelling Victorian adventurer pitched up in the contemporary alternative music world and surfing the sonic potential? (Well, you never know; just read Micheal Moorcock’s Dancers at the End of Time if you don’t believe me. That’s all true, right?) Questions, questions!

And when it comes to the music, we are on no safer ground. AI-generated music meets human manipulation? A taste of automated music of things to come? Pop music in the process of becoming a sentient being, making dance tunes for our robot overlords? Perhaps all of these things. So many questions.

Across 12 tracks, Millie Sievert creates a warped and wonderful vision of pop music, or at least what pop music has the potential to be. It ebbs and flows between Delight’s slightly drug-addled dance vibe, where the music seems ever in a state of flux, and the lyrics come across like the most “out there” stream of consciousness, beat poetic flights of fantasy, and Cyborg Blues menacing, non-human tones. Some songs seem to have focus and structure, such as the tribal drive of Wiley Coyote, a song that balances primal drumming with neo-soul futures and pieces based around spoken word diatribes, such as Earthground Shakefly Dream.

And then there are songs such as I Am The Only Medicine I Need, which in the right club at the right time of night would pass without comment, like a trojan horse smuggling new ideas into a world too set in its ways, too attached to its sonic traditions.

At this point in the listening experience, no questions have really been answered, but the suspicion that this is the work of a non-human hand, that Mille might herself be a construct, albeit one with a nice voice and a beguiling turn of phrase, is solidifying. But if the music’s creative process is something you can puzzle and debate over, the videos accompanying the music are indeed the work of bits and bites, software rather than hard choices.

So, is this album an art installation? A science project? The interface between human and machine? A depiction of one possible route that some art might take? A warning from the future? A playbook of what new technologies offer? A coming together of the human mind and machine logic (or perhaps limitations?) More questions!

Perhaps it is all of those things and more. But whatever it is, it is designed to spark some hot debates and wide-ranging conversations about creativity in the modern world and where it might go. And isn’t that the whole point of art? Answers on a digital postcard.

Play the whole album HERE