Automatic

‘Excess’, Los Angelean trio Automatic’s follow-up to 2019’s musical missive, ‘Signal’, continues where that album appeared to end (or begin). Three years on and despite a globally afflicted clampdown not much has ‘really’ changed structurally. For the better, at least.

Deploying similar spartan synthetique soundscapes: percussive perpetual motion from drummer Lola Dompé, intermittently throbbing and prodding bass (where Halle Saxon’s laconic repetition takes on new meanings) and augmented by a triptych of dissonant, dispassionate, drolly delivered lyricism (particularly Izzy Glaudini’s (dis)affecting lead vocals) this album draws from the dystopian environs of Ballard and Dick (internal and external) to Bret Easton Ellis-type disgust at the commodity-fetishism, protected enclaves of corporate chicanery and land-grabbing malevolence of the 1%. Not so much a premonition of horrors yet to emerge, more revulsion at the horizons on view.

‘Excess’ is a scabrous, scathing and satirical look at the whims, ways and wastage of the ‘developed’ world, one where the freedom to spend, shop, stockpile supplies in the name of ‘freedom’ and ‘liberty’ belies the reality of manufactured de$ires: widespread credit-crazed, debt-laden citizenry bombarded with myriad media-messages designed to manipulate, maladjust and muddle the self into a state of blind conformity and bland uniformity.

Throw in the hellholes that comprise the online worlds of filter bubbles and echo chambers, with cross-purpose notions of being ‘plugged-in’ and ‘connected’ the forecast is bleak with no light in sight. Any pretence of social cohesion and community substituted for stupefied consumerism, a neo-liberal wet dream curdled into a tech-totalitarian nightmare.

‘New Beginning’ kicks matters off, its title suggesting hope and promise, yet the reality is the resigned couplet “In the service of desire/we will travel far away’’. An opening shot aimed at the ‘visions’ of the privileged eyeing up the fruits of new frontiers as their avarice eats away at the current des-res called Earth.

‘Realms’ channels the sonic textperimentalism of John Foxx and Gary Numan’s ‘mandroid in a void’ alienation, cold waves, chilly ambience, atomised atmospheres. Here and now.

The standout is ‘Automaton’, an 80’s flecked discopian dancefloor descent towards the apocalypse aided and abetted by a jittering, skittering pulse. Along with the metallic, metronomic manoeuvres of ‘NRG’ the message is if we’re going down, we‘re doing it in style.

However, despite the ominous themes and seemingly hopeless dreams present, ‘Excess’ can be read as a Situationist screed that can assist in the dismantling of the stultifying spectacle, a manifesto to be adhered to in order to wrestle free from the shackles of the illusory emancipation currently for sale. As the optimistic closer ‘Turn Away’ advises, “there’s a light in the dark/feel the love open up”.