(02.11.05) “The Starlight Eater,” the opening track of Photophob’s Your Majesty Machine, is a soaring anthemic burst of static noises and winged sound like the exulting lift-off of a squadron of sound machines into a crisp dawn. Photophob’s disc for Hive Records is a collection of machine music anthems, high-spirited odes to robot love and robot aspirations. “Her Sexy Circuits” shivers and warps with metallic funk, a breakdown dance beat for a sexy kettle of chrome and flashing lights.
Combining elegant and warm electronic melodies with static-laded breakcore, Photophob seeks to elicit the harmonics of clustered CPUs and the digital slipstream of live wires. “A Little Lesson in Robotic Love, part 1” sings with a bubbling melody over a squelchy bed of expressed gas bubbles while a motor-driven cello drones in the background. “Anger Reduction Control Center Unit” burns offs its melancholic synthesizer music on a pillar of hard steam, metal percussion rattling in the background like a bit of Fortran compiled to perform like a one-armed Steward Copeland. “Nomad’s Theme” opens with the sub-sonic thunder of an interstellar drive while an antique video game performs a bleep-bloop duet with a two-stringed Japanese instrument. Pastoral tones and a complex percussion line intrude on the pair and everyone vanishes into a warp jump together.
Your Majesty Machine doesn’t necessarily break any new ground with the essential components of the Gridlock-style of IDM: the crunchy and melodic wrestling together to produce complex machine music that both
sings and crackles with energy. Photophob’s entry into the arena is an assured introduction and Your Majesty Machine is a solid record that’ll spin quite nicely in your CD player for some time.
Your Majesty Machine is out now on Hive.
