Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

There is two ways to look at the way we have come to rely on machines in our daily lives, one that it has lead down a road of frightening, arts led dystopia, a nightmare vision in which every aspect of our lives has become subservient to the ghost in the shell, or we can look upon it as the only crowning glory we have truly been able to convince ourselves that was worth all the effort; Utopian hooks and creativity beyond the original human thought or a nightmare we can never awake from properly.

The best way, arguably the only way that makes sense in the world of music is to see A Million Machines as working in tandem with our own expressions, in the field of poetry pursuits it would be a lurid and distasteful affair, to place the machine in the place of the human mind, but in music, it only adds to the experience on offer and one that A Million Machines’ MIG and Fate Fatal have embraced with absolute certainty in their self titled debut album.

The future has always been here, it has surrounded us and yet it has only been recently that it has found its own melody, the Synth led giants such as Kraftwerk, Heaven 17, Human League and Gary Numan were the pioneers, the leaders in this post easy listening, post-war rebellion against the same guitar led chord, and they have paved the way for others to follow with assuredness and polished opportunity.

The future has always been here but somehow out of reach, A Million Machines seeks to rectify that with a sense of brooding potency, a raw vibrant anger swept along by a symphony of electronic potential. The 11 tracks burn brightly, MIG and Fate Fatal’s thumping beats and male vocals are bordering on the hypnotic and addictive, they capture the moment, the drive towards that future that was always promised with a sense of the stark and yet pure air filtered in our minds.

In tracks such as Dilemma, My Criminal Mind, Absence Without Leave, Ceremony and Come Tonight, the pair explore the genre with arguably wide eyed optimism but with a steely glance at what was once in the past. A Million Machines, two human beings in charge and one riveting point of fruitful expression, a class act indeed.

Ian D. Hall