My name is JLen. A time traveler and one of the last people left anywhere. This is my last trip to here before I go back to live there. For many years now, I’ve been living in the bot years with the robots. The bots are serious business when they are at work, and they have advanced civilization to a place that would blow your ever-loving human mind. They are also a lot of fun and need to blow off steam just like people do. They like to party, and when they party, that usually means a neural disconnection from NETWEB and a temporary “weed code” takeover of their existence. When the bots run the weed code, they listen to the music of bands from the sixth through eighth decades of human rock n roll, i.e., the 1990s-the 2030s, roughly. They like bands like The Cure, Radio Head, Wyld Stallyns, etc . . . music that derives from basic human emotion but also has a modern electric quality that is particularly palatable to advanced lifeforms. The robots, above all else, LOVE the 2018-2046 band, People Years. It’s annoying. It’s all anyone ever talks about when they’re not talking about what solar system the elders will likely flick the diaspora switch on next.
The robots particularly cherish and are very protective of People Years’ 2024 release, The Last Cantina (due out October 18th on CD and DSPs via Cornelius Chapel Records). It’s by far the biggest cultural icon in galactic robot culture (785 planets wide, so far) and has been for thousands of years, ever since Bot Mose-T found a CD of the album washed up on the Gulf Coast of Alabama. The CD was wrapped in a thousand year old plastic Publix bag, stuffed inside of the cavity of a long-dead dog. It was a fossil, basically, and a testament to the durability of CDs as a medium . . . and the spark of a spiritual awakening of the bots throughout the galaxy. The album has been a boon to the bots’ overall psyche and production ever since. I don’t get it, but somehow, to them, it validates the work they are doing and the dreadful decisions the SCBH (Secret Central Bot Hub) was forced to make regarding the humans, in order to save the Earth.
If we zoom out, The Last Cantina LP’s circuit board is vast, meandering and in no hurry to get to the point. Zoom in, and it’s a focused musical event with a purpose, in perpetual motion. It is likely that when Chris Rowell, Tony Oliver, Greg Slamen, and Wes McDonald made this album so long ago, they did so with thoughts of what what might come later. But they could only see so far . . . Of course they could not have known that the album they were so casually making in years of 2023-2024 CE would be the impetus for the soul lifting new robot source code, the LCSC, that would guide and improve so much of the bot years and bot lives. Bot Abringham-C describes his life : “My life is like surfing a perpetual perfect Jesus wave ever since the LCSC came online. Thanks People Years!”
Today Glide is excited to premiere the expansive track “Flood (Lightning Kids Escape),” a whopper of a tune that clocks in at nearly eight minutes from its sharp guitar hook to, ethereal keys and punk-meets-power-pop vocals to its spaced out, feedback-laden interlude and big drum sound. Reminscent of acts like The Shins, Flaming Lips, Modest Mouse, My Morning Jacket, and even the dream-pop of Luna, the song is a sprawling work of intelligent rock. It’s impressive to see the band truly let their guitar work unravel even despite its preciseness, and one can only imagine that this song live would take the audience into outer space with its cosmic solos.
Chris Rowell Describes the inspiration behind the tune:
“I don’t know exactly how this song came to be, but probably a keyboard riff from Tony [Oliver] that took greater shape. As we twisted it, somewhere in the middle, it reminded me of a flood. Earth sits down at the cosmic kitchen table after a long, difficult couple of centuries and opens a fortune cookie.
‘Take the time to get rid of the toxic people in your life.’ Well, that’s a lot of people in Earth’s life. The big, old wave-tosser will probably feel some relief afterwards – who wouldn’t? But for toxic people (i.e., most people living now), things do not look good. (On a positive note, we do know from the song title that some very tuned-in, well-intentioned young people escape).”
LISTEN:
