Cassette copies available from Dub Cthonic here: dubcthonic.bandcamp.com/album/32-minutes-into-the-future

Los Angeles-based modular synth duo Semiotic Ghosts return with their tenth release, first for 2022, and their first cassette-based release. Two sixteen minute tracks take the listener 32 minutes into the future (or maybe 32 years into the past), presenting a soundtrack to a dystopian world that is eerily like our own.

“Once whole worlds can be simulated for the senses, the only way to assure the integrity of the public imagination will be to get the power to create those worlds out of the hands of an elite and into general circulation.” (William Gibson)

The two primary themes embodied in the album are: the uneven distribution of technological advancements and the presence of the ‘future’ within the present. Semiotic Ghosts are interested in how sound elements are, in this moment, unequally distributed; how these inequalities are likely to be reproduced or altered in the future; and how these inequalities may actually determine the future or futures at which we arrive. By considering three key domains—the amplitude, the pitch, and the temporal—this album will describe some of the ways in which we may be able to see the future as being unequally distributed in the present.

Recorded telepathically during quarantine. Equal parts catharsis and escapism; the result of spooky action at a distance. The sounds are reminiscent of a rusty Commodore 64 where the soul of a pure machine emits some forgotten John Cage composition: subtle pitch shifts and reverb for a happy walk through the woods. Meditate with a lump in your throat, within the space just through the fog of perfect arousal.

The flow of the album is clear and organic, with near perfect amounts of headroom and escalation, allowing the vibrant moments and final reprieves to maximize the impact they aim for.