One of the best things in the world is when two opposites collide and by some celestial chance everything just seems to work. Like Maccas chips and soft serve, or alcohol and night swimming. This is precisely the case with the new track from Brisbane solo artist Machine Age. The track is called Chivalry and it blends an unlikely combination of glitchy electronica and spacious folk, two very different genres that, in this case, clash in the best sort of way.
Who said Chivalry is dead? Pretty folk and industrial electronica collide on the premiere for the new track from Machine Age.
Machine Age is the creative alias of Adrian Mauro, a Brisbane based producer and multi-instrumentalist who only began putting out his own music late 2013. His story is much the same as Justin Vernon’s when he created Bon Iver, though maybe not quite as dramatic. Mauro has spent the past few years playing in bands, and helping friends record their tunes. Artists like Big Scary and BANFF have benefited from his expertise in the past, but it was only when Mauro was bed-bound from a knee injury that he began seriously working on his own music, and Machine Age was born.
Chivalry is the second track that has been put out under the name Following first single All I Ever Wanted. It opens unassumingly like myriad other folk songs, a softly thudding beat overlaid with vocals doused with a decent amount of reverb and a guitar. The harmonised arrangements echo some early Fleet Foxes and it could have very well stopped at just that – a pretty little folk-pop song. But Mauro takes it a bit further when he abruptly introduces a glitchy industrial sample loop that injects the track with a sense of unease. Layers of ominous harmonies build upon one another before everything blooms. Electronic guitars and pounding drums belt away as Mauro croons in the background.
Machine Age has been said to deliver a pretty killer live show. He recently supported #1 Dads in Brisbane, and there have been whispers that the spectacle of watching him re-create these intricate tracks live is something to behold. With only two song under his belt, it looks like Machine Age is shaping up to be one of the most promising new artists of 2015. Who said folk and industrial electronica couldn’t get along, right?
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