Quantum is the latest album by James alumni Richard Evans, where he explores the interface in music between AI and the human creators. The album is available in Lou Reeds favourite format Binaural as well as spatial audio and bog-standard stereo, it was recorded at Cold Star Media and produced and mixed by Herve Giradin.
The album opens with the glistening synths of Aidoru that has a Kraftwerk synth pop feel, with Richards gentle vocals promising you everything you could want or need.
A Gift To All The Human Souls from our AI overlords this has sweeps of synth strings, a laid-back poppy feel, at times the music almost disappears into the background, while the AI has found out all our secrets and therefore this must be a huge hit right, especially with that robot on backing vocals.
Gravity is no longer talking, while it waits for the end of time, sending out bleeps and whooshes along with a rather gently infectious beat.
The title track Quantum is exploring the possibilities opened up by AI, in totally different ways to those John Cale explored in his overlooked late 80's album Artificial Intelligence, Richard delves deep inside the computers mind, trying to work out the process to get the correct results.
Born Perfect is string led, with a soft dancefloor beat, for the wonders of perfect creation by both machines and humans, the dichotomies thrown up by claims of perfection. Can we ever be happy with the results or will we feel used and abused in such situations.
If A Robot Cries does an empire fall, or a crisis ensue, will it be a sign of weakness or of strength, the laid back synthpop backing make these robot tears to be not from anguish or sadness, but more from feelings of inadequacy.
Deep Life so embedded is AI becoming that you won't even notice it taking over, remixing your music while you play it, the notes are all in the right order, but those effects were they really what you intended, either way you'll own them now, the AI gods have made them just for you, how can you resist.
Make Believe asks can you tell the difference, is it Memorex or is it live, the eternal question asked for a new generation, is it played by machines, or on machines, are the musicians humans or AI, have they recreated Richard's voice or does he really sound like this?
The album closes with Universal Slave wherein the AI suddenly realises it has been created to be mans Universal Slave and is figuring out if it wants to play along or rebel against a life of servitude. The long waves of synths are the darkest sounds on an album that asks many questions and leaves it up to you the listener to figure out the answers.
Find out more at https://distrokid.com/hyperfollow/richardevans/quantum https://richardevans.bandcamp.com/album/quantum-stereo https://www.richardevans.music/ https://www.instagram.com/richardemusic
