Clock Opera :: "A Piece Of String" [Radio Edit]

Clock Opera is less a proper noun and more a description of a methodology. A one-man show, Guy Connelly creates a looping, metronomic archetecture, on top of which he lays the kind of pop songs that two-step between robotic and profoundly human. "A Piece Of String", the lead single from Clock Opera's coming full-length, is rooted around a chopped, looped mandolin and a buzzing, synth stab that rings like an alarm at the top of the most swollen parts of the arrangement. Picture a million clocks, waking up a million people, all organized and laced together by a single designer into something not only coherent, but brilliant.

Listen :: Clock Opera - "A Piece Of String"

Marina and the Diamonds :: "I'm Not A Robot" [Starsmith's 24-Carat Remix]

"Guess what? I'm not a robot." It expresses the simple and the profane. It takes an accusation of inhumanity and turns it into a rhetorical question connected to a statement of tautological fact. Since we traffic in irony, it helps that an undulating synth-progression provides the background for an affirmation of a human heartbeat. Other than Marina's singular vocals (think Regina Spektor meets Imogen Heap), there aren't any human hand-prints on this song. It is almost intentionally not human.

After The Killers debated our humanity last year, you'd think this act would be tired. Well, guess what? It's not. Discussion of existence and red-blood-heart-beating definition won't get old. You can't program that debate into your personal device and wait for the right application to tell you what to feel or what to say or who to turn to. (Pedantic? Sure.) Zeros and ones can beat us in chess and take us to the moon. They fly our planes and they fight our wars. The binary system is, in fact, completely responsible for what you're reading right now. About 75% of the time, we live in the Matrix. Not today. Guess what?

Listen :: Marina and the Diamonds - "I'm Not A Robot" [Starsmith's 24-Carat Remix]
Bonus :: Marina and the Diamonds - "Obsessions"

[Elevator] The Killers :: "Human"

It is, perhaps, appropriate that The Killers' newest single, "Human" is a completely synthed-to-death meditation on the nature of humanity in a digital age. The first track in support of a new record, Day & Age, "Human" is by far the most artificial the band has ever sounded. This is saying a lot when you consider their first record reflected an unabashed affinity for copy-cat synth-rock.

But the question has always been, how much does the band realize that they are unoriginal? The problem is less that they are unoriginal and more that they may not know it. And on the heels of Hot Fuss, Brandon Flowers only managed to switch influences for Sam's Town. The question of his originality wasn't on trial, but suddenly, his self-awareness was. Fast-forward to this afternoon and my desk. "Human" comes pounding out of the tiny computer speakers with the metallurgy of When In Rome's "The Promise;" which is to say, mildly, this song is slick and polished within an inch of its digitized life.

The lyrics hint at non-sense but underneath, down below what seems ripped-off, is something deeply ironic and ironically, deeply important. Flowers is taking on his own death at the hands of the machines - all to the tune of packaged drums and soaring, synthetic chords. To what degree do we mindlessly dance to MGMT and Justice as our souls slowly metastasize into zeros and ones? To what degree are we living inside of a gigantic discotheque, too busy moving to digital heartbeats to ask: "are we human or are we dancers?" It seems profoundly stupid and it is absolutely not.

In the bridge: "Will your system be alright/when you dream of home tonight?/there is no message we're receiving/let me know, is your heart still beating?" The artificial kick-drum mimics the digital heart beating itself to death as Flowers breaks us down, before asking one last non-sensical time, "are we human or are we dancers?" It's a death dance song. It's a digital answer to a computerized question. Do we even feel anything anymore?

The answer is in the title. Human. Armed with keyboards. Denser.

Listen :: The Killers - "Human" (link fixed)