Robert Lippok, a member of both Tarwater and To Rococo Rot, has seen the future, and it is automated. Lippok’s Robot ep, a staid musical representation of a sterile science fiction future in which sounds are mechanized, the human touch removed from the equation as much as possible. It’s not a new idea, since artists have been experimenting with machine-made sounds and the eradication of human influence on music for years, and there’s something strangely atavistic about Robot, perhaps a look at the future with one foot set in the near past.
On Robot Lippok stays true to well-worn electronic tools of the trade, working with simple beats and minimalist atmospheres, evoking the sounds of our future robotic servants (or, more pessimistically, rulers) at work. “Unexpected Behavior, No. 7” builds a chilled-out track of rarely unexpected progression over a figure of morse code repetition, and “After Work” is a bit more upbeat, with a more pronounced beat, though, as expected, even in their free time, the robots stay well within the lines of predictability, though halfway through the melodic voice of the pieces stutters nicely before righting itself and building further, a move which, while likely purposeful on Lippok’s part, is a reminder of the fallibility of such “automatic” machines.
As robot science becomes less of a focus, the wild dreams of machinated servitude become more fantasy than eventual fact, even the word “robot” begins to inspire a sense of nostalgia, visions of the future made decades into our past. Lippok’s reliance on a style from years past is perhaps a mirror of such a phenomenon, for Robot would be more comfortable amongst material more than a decade old than it likely would be in the year 2016; like the robot builders who continue to return to the standbys of android aesthetics, Lippok relies heavily on the past for his work in the present, and his vision of the future.
