Forgive the not-so-intellectual reference, but I am a Star Trek fan. And as a Star Trek fan, I find it hard to listen to the recent wave of Björk-indebted and Arca-spearheaded, pre-apocalyptic, mutant-era electronica and not think about Species 8472. Here’s a picture for you:
More powerful even than the Borg, these non-humanoids come from a dimension accessible only through gravitational singularities, whether that makes any actual scientific sense or not. What gives Species 8472 their extraordinary power is a finespun synthesis of the innate and the engineered: creating their living, breathing weapons and ships from their own genetic material, they have effectively restricted all of their use of technology to biotechnology. Their introduction in season 3 of Voyager left the 11-year old me with a conviction I haven’t really changed my mind about since: that the only thing better than a food replicator is one that grows out of your stomach.
I’m mentioning all this because “Malevolence,” the collaboration between South African producer Dasychira and Vancouver’s Baby Blue, sounds like the kind of music Species 8472 would be making if they weren’t entirely consumed with trying to destroy all life in the galaxy. The unplaceable timbres of the producers’ chosen samples and synth patches, menacing background thumps and thuds, and excruciating shrieks of animals I didn’t even know existed sound as if created with instruments just as organic as the human voice, and just as terrifying as mankind’s capacity for hostility. Utilizing biotechnology in music is a frontier surely to be explored, but songs like “Malevolence” shed (rather murky) light on what those explorations might potentially look like.
Listen below:
