Some days, you just need a backdrop tune as you speed down a cyberpunk highway towards the afterlife while the spirits of the unknown, which no doubt have taken the form of synthesizers, surround you and your astoundingly bright-coloured car. You can count on synthwave artist Lazermortis, Saint John’s new kid on the EDM block, to provide on such days with their new single “Autonetic Highway,” a sneak peek of their upcoming EP, Autonetic Afterlife“
Seeking to explore the themes of death, dying, and artificial intelligence on the album, “Autonetic Highway” is a unique and deftly-crafted teaser on what’s sure to be an outstanding collection.
“This EP is sort of a marriage of my two passions; my work, which is funeral directing and embalming, and my music,” says Lazermortis “Some of the songs transition from life to death, like with ‘Autonetic Highway’.”
As is usually the case with the synthwave genre as a whole, Lazermortis’s track is bursting with energy, with more zig-zagging bells and whistles than you can shake a laser at. Each and every nanosecond is packed with layer after layer of different synthesizers, all of them brimming with their own personality, whether it be the light-hearted growl of the bassier instruments or the hauntingly melodic higher pitches.
“I wanted to explore how artificial intelligence might perceive death and dying and what an afterlife might be like for a machine based on what it was created to do, like something being used for evil going to hell, or good going to heaven, or even what machine purgatory might be like,” she says of the EP.
All these synthesizers amalgamate into a high-octane dart across a highway, the speed of the vehicle matched only by the sheer amount of activity that our brains are processing. Throughout the tune, there’s an overwhelming feeling of having come very far, as though having finished the end of one’s life, with just as much of a distance to go; perhaps the trials of the afterlife. This vibe peaks, appropriately, around the middle of the tune, caught between two worlds.
“I definitely put a lot of emotions into it and I really hope it translates well through the music.”