A little over a year ago, Talking with Hands (aka Matthew Smith) was working on some new music to follow-up his second full-length, New Public Domain. He set out to craft two EPs; less daunting than an album and more concise in their subject matter. The topics most top of mind were Artificial Intelligence’s entanglements with creativity and the general bleakness of being a musician in the era of streaming. Heady to say the least.
While honing those batches of songs a funny thing happened; it became abundantly clear that these two separate-and-heady concepts were actually one album’s worth of cohesive-and-clear thoughts. Organic Machine officially emerged.
Songs like “#1 Record” are about the desire for recognition as an artist, despite big tech leaders like Spotify’s Daniel Ek making it clear that music is only becoming more devalued. “King of Hands” is a nod to AI’s inability to manifest a standard five digit hand while also ruminating on creativity itself. “Unprofessional Artist” (a personal favorite) is a contemplative piece about the compulsion towards creativity; the enjoyment of the process and not just working towards some nebulous prize.
These concepts sound like dense tomes but Smith allowed himself to embrace an “anything goes” approach to the sonic landscape. He weaves these ideas into big hooks with buzzy guitars, memorable verses with sampling flourishes or hyper-processed vocals with multiple narrators. It is anything but dense feeling. It is light, catch and memorable start to finish.
Organic Machine is available everywhere today. It’s on Bandcamp, Ampwall and your streaming service. Get it on Apple Music, Spotify, YouTube Music or whatever it is you like to use. Listen to it while you’re reading this. Tell a friend about it.
On a personal note, I’m over the moon excited for everyone to hear this. Conceptually, the album is right up my alley. Musically, the album checks a ton of boxes for me as it is reminiscent of AIR, Jason Falkner, XTC, et al but imbues so much of Smith’s own originality you can’t pin it down.
We worked extensively on the lead up to today; culling remixes for “#1 Record“, “King of Hands” and “Organic Machine“, making videos with Asher Rogers lending a ton of creativity. Matt flew to Austin to film a short for “Organic Machine” with TJ Masters – it’s an honest-to-god incredible piece of work. We made all the artwork for everything collaboratively; I’m incredibly proud of the Black Mirror-esque animated album design. Tye Bellar mastered it with a finesse that should not go unnoticed.
All that is to say, for an album about the fears of AI and the self-doubt of being an artist, we created something undeniably human. No amount of prompt engineering could have gotten us here. I hope you enjoy the results as much as we enjoyed creating them… human to human.
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