Music Review // HOL1D4Y "Autonomatic"

 

One of my favorite parts about rock music is that sometimes you can have fewer lyrics but really end up saying so much more.   This new song, "Autonomatic", doesn't have a lot of words per line on the lyrics, sometimes it's only one word, but yet the point of the song can still get across with lyrics such as: "We're losing our hold / Embracing replacement / The warning unfolds".   While I know and recognize that this song is about AI (and it doesn't support it) I also just think of how we can live our lives through screens on social media as opposed to being out there in the real world.  

With big guitar sounds and even the double guitar appearance in the music video, this just feels like music from a different time.  It can remind me of Stone Temple Pilots, but it also just manages to take me back to that time when rock n roll was dangerous- when people thought it was going to lead you to a life of ruin- and not something we had to worry about being AI.  I really would like to go back to the time before music was AI and this song can take you there, at least in a state of mind.

During this music video there are some trippy effects but also black and white scenes from what looks like Frankenstein.   In a lot of ways, I feel like that is a good comparison to AI because Frankenstein's monster can somewhat appear human-like, but is not human and perhaps the one thing missing to make it so is a soul.   This is also touched upon in the lyrics as there is a line which says "Lifting melody from life".  I think that's the most important thing to remember about AI: it cannot have those same experiences that humans can, it can only pretend to have them based on what it learns from us.

Should there come a time when AI in music isn't made illegal but maybe has its own genre and its own platform so I can just ignore it entirely, I feel like listening to "Autonomatic" is a great way just to hear rock sounds, but the lyrics can also just represent that idea of being a copy of a copy of a copy, where sometimes you don't feel real or your experiences feel like they've already been lived.  Yes, this is a strong statement against AI- and rightfully so- but it can also be taken in other ways which I also happen to enjoy.