Track By Tracks: Bardic Mechanism – Hues Of Everyday (2024)

1. What is Music:

This first track is easily the most cheerful, with a carefree electro-pop vibe. ‘What is Music’ is a commentary on general AI. Whether applied to text, visual art, or music production, contemporary AI has a strong and nearly universal tendency to duplicate features. The fake-out bass drops three-quarters of the way through is a perfect illustration of this. However, it’s also one of those rare occasions when this duplication creates something truly fun. ‘Hues of Everyday’ is a rainbow of headspaces, and this electro-pop fever dream is about as happy as the EP gets. From here on out, it’s all downhill and very sideways.

2. Recycling Bin:

Darkwave doomer vibes to complete job applications. This song builds on the lyrical structure of the previous track, with each line a simple word or phrase. This time, the words tell a story. A story of trying, failing, and being cast aside. The impassive corporate façade only breaks toward the end, when the time comes for hard truths. The stanzas are interleaved with choir segments that serve to humanize the piece. These are easily my favorite elements of the track. Enjoy this moment of subdued melancholy – things are about to get heavy.

3. Pain:

In an overt sense, this is the darkest track of the EP. The fusion of punk rock and metal creates a sense of suffering tinged with rebellion, and this palate paints a triumph of abject loathing over everything else. The lyrics are driven by a fundamental hatred so strong that it cannot be threatened by learned helplessness and a complete lack of hope. This song recalls specific personal experiences, but it goes beyond them. It presents a total vision of conscious existence as a lopsided cage match between a doomed Self and an uncaring, endlessly powerful other. In other words, everyday life through my eyes and nerve endings.

4. The Expert:

There have been times in my career when death was just another familiar face. It’s a world I’ve wanted to distance myself from, but could never really escape. I produced ‘Hues of Everyday’ when I knew that the distance I wanted was coming to an end. As I write these words, “mirth more dread than wrath” is a relatable daily undertone. ‘The Expert’ is a poem about geƫng pulled back in, and the only track in ‘Hues of Everyday’ where the lyrics are not my own. Although adopting AI as a musical instrument has granted me incredible versatility, I’ve been seƫng poetry to music since I first picked up a guitar. Rudyard Kipling’s writings are my favorite to work with.

5. Silver:

My own translation of the Russian rock song ‘Серебро’ (‘Silver’) by Би-2 (Bi-2). It utilizes the chord progression, rhythm, and rhyme scheme of the original, and I normally play it on acoustic guitar. This is the same sound, just the transhuman edition. It is proof that I can achieve precision with my current process. Rather than letting an algorithm fail gracefully toward partial success and making excuses for the state of the final product, I use AI as if it were a musical instrument in its own right – creative variations in the output are a choice rather than a concession. From a lyrical standpoint, this song concludes the ‘Hues of Everyday’ arc. There are things in life that we have to do. We do not do them because we want to. We do not expect to succeed – we know that we will fade into the fog and be forgotten. And yet, we do them still. We do them because they are important.