NOCUI finds harmony between the digital and the analogue on "MAXIMAL RHAPSODY"

Humans have long feared the consequences of advancing technologies at a personal level, all the while pushing for digital innovation as the sign of the ultra modern, cutting-edge utopia in the wider world. In popular culture, the sci fi and horror genres paint an intrinsically chartable history of everyday anxieties about the onslaught of the robotic and algorithmic: from Blade Runner and Snowpiercer, to more recently, M3GAN and The Creator. With today's children surmised as the iPad generation, and fears of everyone imminently having to 'retrain in cyber' to not be put out of a job by advancing AI, the story of harmony between the human and the technological is a rare one.

On his debut record, Italian Robot, producer, musician, and DJ NOCUI sets out to embrace a certain retro-futurism, and finds synthesis between the digital and the analogue. With a sound reminiscent of early Daft Punk or The Chemical Brothers, Italian Robot pulls from a distinctly glitchy and vast digital sonic world, weaving in nuanced lyricism and melody that charts the contemporary excitement and anxiety of living in an increasingly technological world. Whilst it captures the clinical, alienating element of the digital through its sparse and algebraic soundscape, the album is ultimately an invitation to dance, to make connection, and to build community.

Giving the impression that it could have been titled by ChatGPT alongside previous singles "Machine Power" and "Give Up Control", the opening track "MAXIMAL RHAPSODY" forwards a pulsing, and sharp electronic production wasting no time in thrusting the listener into this starkly dystopian utopic world. The album then takes a clearly audible journey, transitioning from these more formulaic, strikingly spacey tracks to ones that increasingly dial down the digital soundboard and centre NOCUI's vocals like "Crave the Physical" and "No More Stress". As the record progresses, it shows its true colours with a post-disco, contemporary R&B, human-orientated core.

The resulting project pushes boundaries to the same extent it defies genres, forcing the listener to take the time to reflect about how they fit, or perhaps don't fit, into today's modern technologies. Unlike AI has been heralded to offer, NOCUI is careful to never provide a clear answer or a black and white conclusion, for the success of the record lies in its murky tangle of feelings. For being so couched in the digital, it certainly engenders some real human emotion.