Clock DVA
Man-Amplified

The subculture of Cyberpunk, understood as an aesthetic-literary and artistic movement, as well as musical, found its greatest expression in literature in the works of William Gibson ("Neuromancer", "Count Zero", "Mona Lisa Overdrive") constituting the famous "Trilogy", and in music in the masterpiece album "Buried Dreams" by Clock DVA.

Within those grooves lie some of the most valuable and prolific insights for the evolution of electronics tout court in the coming decades, from what would become Techno-Trance (Orbital, Biosphere, note the allusive and almost programmatic names), that is, the amalgam between Ambient Music (and the Copernican revolution contained within it), the metronomic rhythmic precursors of electro-beat and even earlier, certain sonic solutions made possible by the advent of synthesizers (Synth-Pop had an importance far beyond its own self-awareness), to what would be EBM.

The music that enveloped that tense, violent, morbid concept, with Adi Newton’s voice sometimes ethereal, reminiscent of certain "industrial" episodes of Joy Division, ("The Hacker" and "Velvet Realm" above all, but also the title track itself) predominantly dark and deep, almost a continuous foreboding (another reference: the brilliant intuition of the off-screen voice shift by Suicide) gave an idea of changing spatiality, sometimes more open sometimes claustrophobic, like a space-time tunnel, or simply understood in the most "traditional" and romantic new-wave perspective (the one sublimely expressed in their second "Thirst") in the sense of human existence subject to the end, even "the end of eternity" (to clarify the claustrophobic sense of a perhaps little-known novel by Isaac Asimov). That decadent minimalist aesthetic drawn from European new wave culture (the aforementioned Joy Division in "The Eternal", "Day of The Lords", "Decades", but also Bauhaus reveal unseen proximities) and American (the aforementioned Suicide, but also the precursors Velvet Underground), provided vital energy for the creative art of Newton and his associates at the "Advance Research Station", a sort of virtual laboratory station orbiting in that bionic Sheffield not far from Manchester.

After closing the contract for artistic differences with Interfish (they had published at least part of their "official" works until then, not counting the parallel TAGC The Anti Group Communication), Clock DVA after that unsurpassable Art-Rock pinnacle that is "Buried Dreams" land in Italy, where Contempo, from that Florence which was first the epicenter of the Italian new-wave (Diaframma, Rinf, Moda...) and then its amalgamation with avant-garde electronics (Pankow for example), to give birth to this dense concept album that, if it cannot go beyond the decadent-desperate lyricism of "Buried Dreams", develops the more philosophical and metaphysical aspect of the worldview underlying that creative period. More rhythmic and less atmospheric, more Krafwerk-oriented (Adi Newton will always be indebted to the pioneers of "Krautrock" for certain electro-beat rhythms) as well as entirely electronic, essentially more homogeneous in terms of the overall architecture of harmonic compositions and beat organization, the title immediately clarifies the focus of the work. In this sense, it talks about "Amplification" in the sense of extending the perceptive, exploratory, and knowledge capabilities of Man, made available by the most current and sophisticated "tools" (an exhaustive analysis of which is provided on the back cover), establishing among other things a line of continuity with prehistoric and ancient ages. If at first it was flint weapons, the invention of the wheel, the discovery of fire, and then the successive evolution of the inventions of Homo Sapiens and its successors to expand knowledge of the world, today are the computers, (thematically staged within the same creative-musical process) Artificial Intelligence, simulating the human mind, and the frontiers of Virtual Reality.

"Men-Amplifiers" is all said above, "Final Program" (the album's lead single) is within the concept of computing inside the creative act something definable for Humanity as a "point of no return" (the expansive sounds give an almost post-apocalyptic sense, "Final" in this sense), "Fractalize" introduces the topic of the algebra of "Fractals", complex systems of mathematical algorithms that allow a representation of the universe that pushes to the frontiers of the infinitely small, and is tormented by particularly scathing and hypnotic percussiveness (it is the track that most recalls Cabaret Voltaire and Industrial in general), on "Techno Geist" there is an almost epic breath, the track seems to convey the cold of sidereal distances, "Bitstream", rhythmic virtuosity, can be considered quietly the alter ego of "The Robots" by Krafwerk: danceable yet thematically complex, like the entirety of this, incredibly successful in harmonic perfection and the geometry of sonic textures, concept album. A special mention goes to "NYC Overload": the rhythms slow down, the sky turns leaden and gray "like a television tuned to a dead channel" (W. Gibson), and it reopens the thematic gap of Cyberpunk: an apocalyptic scenario, a premonition of something concerning an existential blackout involving humans and machines. Indeed: even Man, the first word in the title, is part of the narrative dimension, in addition to (albeit advanced and potentially alienating) machines.

Adi Newton works on every single sound with the precision of a miniaturist, the result is a transparent, glassy, precious electro jewel, between beats and elusive melodic openings the narration flows of a future aware that it is "a" and not "the" future, but certainly an exhilarating present.