Progressive jazz-metal trio Voronoi have released their new single Robots As Pathos/Menace, taken from their forthcoming debut album The Last Three Seconds.
“Robots as Pathos and Robots as Menace are two terms coined by the author Isaac Asimov, and are the two categories that he assigns tales about AI to. The former is the more common—and the more interesting in his opinion – and is about AI as the victims of humankind. The latter is the opposite, in which AI is the wrongdoer in a story. HAL from 2001: A Space Odyssey perfectly depicts an arc that encapsulates both of these ideas,” explains keyboardist Aleks Podraza.
“I wanted to reflect these ideas in the track, with the melancholy intro representing the tragedy of AI, and the carnage of the main meat of the song representing AI as an evil entity. I played around a lot with rhythm on this track, particularly the last riff, where Tom’s cymbal is playing every 7th semiquaver whilst the groupings from the riff before are sounded underneath. I’d not heard this done anywhere else before, and the idea of it got me pretty stoked! I tried to channel the old Black Sabbath philosophy of just having a tune that was back to back riffs. It’s a really simple way of writing, but I think it works so well. There’s a lot going on in this track. I’m only scratching the surface. I’ll leave it up to you guys to pick it apart.”
Like what you hear? Robots As Pathos/Menace is available to stream or purchase HERE.
The Last Three Seconds is due for release on 7th May 2021 via Small Pond and Art As Catharsis Records, available to pre-order HERE.
