You just don’t know where you are with Fingerless. One minute they are producing psychedelic shoegaze slacker rock with the odd Gregorian chant thrown in, the next thing they produce ‘Sympathetic Love’ which is unlike anything I’ve heard before. And I’ve heard a lot. But the thing is, they are brilliant enough to pull it off and produce one of the most intriguing singles I’ve heard in a long while. These musical misfits describe the single as futuristic folk pop or AI Indie Rock. It is Kraftwerk meeting Peter, Paul and Mary. Pharrel Williams mixed with a touch of Air. It is absolutely marvellous – innovative and creative and a joy to listen to.
Marc Cheeseman says of the themes of the song:
Relationships are a process involving the interaction of (at least) two independent systems. Humans, electrochemical machines, have spent thousands of years living in large, complex societies, attempting to understand and improve how we co-exist (and we’re still not very good at it). As sentient artificial lifeforms, a different variety of machine, are increasingly integrated into our hypermodern society, there is a risk that the interaction of these new independent artificial systems will develop into a positive feedback loop; moving the affected systems away from an equilibrium state towards instability, and ultimately chaos. Don’t panic? Don’t feed back!
There is a deeply ingrained sense of humour in this exposition but there is also a clear indication of the boundless musical curiosity and intelligence behind this music. Cheeseman apparently used free text-to-speech software to create artificial vocals for the verses.
One thing is for certain, Fingerless will keep you on your toes. And they are all the more interesting for that. Out today through the peerless 4000 Records, you can download/stream ‘Sympathetic Love’ from all the usual download/streaming sites here.
