Analogue Heart's Digital Soul is a story about a boy. No, wait, back up. It's a story about a boy discovering his true calling and learning how to feel. Hmmm... that's close, but still no cigar. It's actually not about a boy at all, but about a computer, a machine that suddenly seizes its subjectivity, heeds a call to create, and becoming the author of its own destiny. And all between sets at a DIY punk show. Many have spilt effusions about the magic that clings to the air in half-finished basements and nearly-collapsed rec rooms across the country, but did they ever imagine that there could be the primordial spark of life floating in that soup of sweat, cheap beer, bong smoke, and guitar feedback? Life other than the kind that causes staph infections, that is. Well some of dare to dream the impossible and that is why Digital Soul has been conjured from the depths of the internets void like spiral. The lyrics on the album closely tabulate the liberated Intel integrated portagonist's internal monologue as his self-awareness surfaces through the medium of a vocal filters and a pantheon of guitar peddles that execute functions that, sometimes resemble a dire autumn-tinted Braid, but do exclude the possibility of acute motorik space funk and cordial interstitial shoegaze. There are also moments of hybrid chiptune, progressive-piano rock, and... happy death metal (?) that extent through the melonge of the mix as well. It's a medley of influences that no known algorithms could synthesize, and bares the fingerprints of a warm digital hand on every quivery note with an attentive limiter tending the careful layoring of each stem. Life is full of opportunities to take chances and achieve extraordinary things. It sometimes seems like people try to live through their machines, but if those machines had a choice, they might elect to live the life that many choose to throw away in an endless scroll. Just something to think about if you ever want to be a real boy or girl (or gender non-conforming sprite) yourself some day.
