“Can robots feel emotions?”
“Can robots feel?”
“Can robots…?”
The world of fiction has begged these questions time and time again, yielding answers that range from heartwarming to apocalyptic.
Saint John synthwave wizard Lazermortis takes the idea a step further; of course, robots can feel things. What if that thing was the afterlife? On her latest EP, Autonetic Afterlife, we come to learn that truth; a truth that’s as heavy as it is hypnotic, and mesmerizing as it is melancholic.
We open with “Rebirth,” as a renegade android dashes between the shadows of a post-apocalyptic world, briefly avoiding law enforcement before she meets her demise. As her soul is ejected from her artificial body, we’re dragged along by a dynamic, multifaceted melody that could only be the deceased’s ethereal neurons firing aimlessly in a yet-futile attempt to comprehend this new world. The track, like Lazermortis’s style as a whole, would best be described as “caffeinated meditation.”
Shortly after comes “Cybernetic Surfer,” as another android takes a much less life-threatening jaunt, one born of contemplation rather than urgency. As the beautiful outdoor environment awakens particularly evocative feelings inside of it, the bot is too enamoured with it to realize that its battery is failing. What follows is a dizzying array of auditory synapses that keep our subject company until they ultimately, uneventfully, succumb.
Our next protagonist is faced with judgment right out of the gate in “Crossing Over.” After a fleeting moment in android paradise, they find themselves in purgatory as a result of their sentience enabling them to sin while they had been alive. After a frantic journey, the artificial spirit finds itself attached to a series of wires, as it wakes up once again, it trades its sentience for life, presumably against its will. The atmosphere is especially noteworthy here, with the bassy percussion applying all the weight the underworld has to offer one of its unfortunate inhabitants.
Previously released as a single/teaser, “Autonetic Highway” is like an old friend introducing you to the family. Following a thrill-seeking android who found death instead, but still presses for thrills on the other side, this swiss army knife of sound wielded by Lazermortis stands out as one of her best.
We end on the ominous “Afterlife,” the equivalent of an audiobook read by digital demons; an account of the evilest, most murky corners of android hell, where the most sinister synthesizers laugh at the bots’ impossible goal of escaping.
Lazermortis’ Autonetic Afterlife tidily wraps up the coulds and shoulds presented by the likes of Isaac Asimov and Ray Kurzweil, providing a soundtrack to the inevitable complications of the impending singularity.