I remember a time when certain people, generally those with long hair and wielding guitars, which they did with one foot on the monitor, warned us that digital technology was going to ruin music. Ironically, I think it is those with long hair and wielding guitars, which they did with one foot on the monitor, that have been responsible for the reduced rate of evolution in modern music. Change is good, viva la difference, and all that! And after all, why be afraid of a synth or a sampler any more than you would recoil from a tuba or cross the road to avoid someone carrying a mandolin? They are just the tools of a trade, a very broad trade at that.
I mention this only to put “Digitally Modified,” the new one from Co.LeGa, into context. 50 years since those bored punks turned fledgling synths to their own dark dance will, artists like this are continuing the quest. “Digitally Modified” might not sound exactly like the music those early pioneers were making, but it comes from the same place and is certainly part of a shared creative vision and spirit.
If there is an echo of those post-punk days, it is found in the vocals, the more human part of this man-machine hybrid. Musically, its mechanical melodies echo the more 90’s vibes of Nine Inch Nails or Depeche Mode once they had fully embraced the darkness, albeit Depeche Mode had they been through an acid bath that stripped their sound to its starkest and sun-bleached electronic bones.
As the clockwork vibes mix with the digital dexterity to create a chilled, slightly less than human, industrial dance anthem, you realize that this is a self-fulfilling prophecy – a song, or at least a sonic statement warning about the encroachment of the digital world on our lives, made possible through the advancement of digital technologies in the musical world.
And far from being the thing that those narrow-minded rockers feared, such music has often been used to raise such concerns far better than those old school six-stringers writing more overblown epics about Hobbits taking a ring to Mordor, surely.
Cutting-edge music in every sense!
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