The day your love will shine, we'll try to have a good time.

The latest Black Moth Super Rainbow album sounds like a robot coming to terms with having human emotions. It's pretty great. But it was after making that assessment (the music sounding like a computer that's realizing both assurance and weariness) that I read this in the liner notes the promo CD came with.

The music agreeably dwells in contradiction; the songs contained herein have a feel both earnestly nostalgic, and hauntingly futuristic. Should the robots working in our factories, vacuuming our floors, and operating our gaming consoles choose to rise up and revolt, Eating Us could, perhaps, be used to serve as the first indication that our beloved machines had begun to understand the subtle complexities of human emotion.

Now that's creepy. I'd say I'm in complete agreement.

I know they're from Pittsburgh, a dying relic of the post-WWII American industrial machine (though I understand "'Burgh's back"). Think of what the decaying heft of the Rust Belt says about capabilities and limitations of humans. These people have dealt with this reality for far longer than the rest of the country. That's exactly the sentiment that Devo speaks to, being from the rubber town of Akron, Ohio. Devo's commentary on the human race was more devolutionary focused, as in humans were to blame for their declining standards. It wasn't the machine's fault. (That said, they did delve into the technological domination of our culture.) For these bands and this region, the future came and left them with struggle and humiliation, not hope and promise.



Does it ever blow your mind that one day soon, machines will rule our lives while allowing humans to assert they are the ones in control? Has that already happened?