The aesthetic of The Computer Did It’s album art meshes vapourwave and psychedelia, whilst the open window is reminiscent of Aldous Huxley’s The Doors of Perception. The album art alone promises discovery and revelation. So, what do we discover when we step through the window and listen to the album?
Over the course of the four songs, Pleth Aura creates an increasingly fast paced and claustrophobic sound. The first track, ‘The Biggest Slumber Mankind Has Ever Seen’, is soft and gentle, drifting in sleep. Over the course of the album, the sound builds towards the final track, ‘Descent To The New World’.
The Computer Did It is more than a growing tempo though. It is a musically complex interweaving of different sounds, each with different emotions attached to them. At just over ten minutes in length, this is the perfect album to listen to laying down. The absence of lyrics lets the listener fill the music with their thoughts.
Can music without words have themes? Pleth Aura evidently chose to name the songs of The Computer Did It for a reason. The futuristic theme is clear from the synthesised, electronic sound. The album title acts as a reference to advances in artificial intelligence.
The first track, ‘The Biggest Slumber Mankind Has Ever Seen’ suggests an ignorance shared by all of humanity, that humanity is asleep, blissfully unaware of reality. The Computer Did It is an awakening, moving towards the new world of the final track, ‘Descent To The New World’.
The middle tracks ‘Flight and Fight (II)’ and ‘Your Utopia, My Dystopia (IV)’ are both references to dichotomies. They represent crossroads, where the choice one has to make is a choice of interpretation. When you wake from the slumber, do you fight or flight? When you imagine the future world, do you see utopia or dystopia?
It is significant that The Computer Did It ends at the descent. What do you discover after descending? If The Computer Did It is an introduction to Pleth Aura, perhaps Pleth Aura’s future projects are a representation of what is at the bottom of the descent.
Listen to The Computer Did It below.
Words by Lily Blake