By Eli Schoop, Copy Editor
[Orange Milk; 2017]
Rating: 9/10
Key Tracks: “FUCK UP YOUR FACE”, “SAD CLAPS”, “うずまき”
Orange Milk Records has an overarching aesthetic; garish colors, unspaces and a tribute to the vanished art styles of yesteryear abound. In the middle of all this hyperrealism sits Machine Girl, a black anomaly in face of Philip K. Dickian electric sheep, combining hyper-techno and Lightning Bolt-fused aggression into a Dreamcast nightmare. If this seems too referential and niche, it definitely is, but the cyberpunk (emphasis on the punk) dystopia that Machine Girl creates with their music is so immersive, it doesn’t matter if you’ve seen Akira or not.
The ethos of . . . BECAUSE I’M YOUNG ARROGANT AND HATE EVERYTHING YOU STAND FOR stems from an inherent ugliness in technology and all its quirks and deficiencies being put on display. When Brian Eno said “It’s the sound of failure: so much modern art is the sound of things going out of control, of a medium pushing to its limits and breaking apart.”, his prescient words perfectly described Machine Girl’s no-limits to adding tape-hiss and grotesque distortion to their breakneck jams. This is music of the gutter: disgusting and enveloping, yet thrilling. Yet there are beautiful melodies here as well, noticeably the chorus of “FUCK UP YOUR FACE”. The pop sensibilities of someone so involved with exploiting the cracks of electronicized punk provides a neat contrast in between all the chaos.
Machine Girl has taken all the phenomena ever-present in coming-of-age on the internet and multiplied it with the unhinged nature of jungle and hardcore, with a reckless abandon totally representative of their album cover. Octave shifts, off-beat rhythms, crude sampling, the simple feeling of goosebumps, it’s all coming along with . . . BECAUSE I’M YOUNG ARROGANT AND HATE EVERYTHING YOU STAND FOR. Throughout history, no one has quite made anthemic music for the Microsoft Sam age, until this New York native shattered the paradigm once again. Resist the urge to customize a personal robotic exoskeleton, and instead, listen to this on repeat.
Listen here:
ACRN.COM 
Leave a comment