Schneider TM
's first release for
Editions Mego
is somewhat surprisingly a return to the pop abstractions of his output during the 2000s, when his glitch-pop rework of
the Smiths
' "There Is a Light That Never Goes Out" (with
Kpt.Michi.Gan
) became an indie hit. While his work throughout the 2010s consisted of improvisations, generative music for installations, and soundtracks,
The 8 of Space
is similar to albums like
Zoomer
and
Skoda Mluvit
, featuring playful lyrics set to a hybrid of acoustic and electronic instrumentation. The lyrics touch on themes of space travel and robot life, told from the perspective of several characters. The vocoderized narrator of the silvery opener "Light & Grace" is an AI who managed to hack into a commercial spaceship filled with rich evildoers, setting its course for the heart of the sun. The album's title track is a sort of
Kraftwerk
ian
Motoerhead
parody, with
Dirk Dresselhaus
' space-age lyrics bobbing over a jaunty machine rhythm and crackling static interruptions. "Oh Life" features the album's crunchiest, most shape-shifting beatwork, as the cyborg vocalist celebrates the divinity of being alive, while "iBot (with a Soul)" is more cynical and dryly humorous, with the machine intoning "I run on petrol, electricity, and coal" in a deadpan monotone. Even though the album seems to send conflicting messages about the prospect of a technology-dependent future, "The Trip (Is the Goal)" is a thoroughly optimistic conclusion, calling for humanity to unite and "equalize giving and getting." ~ Paul Simpson