by Anika Maculangan
Have you ever glanced up at the sky, asking God if he is there? Folk-pop duo @ (pronounced as ‘At’), certainly have. In fact, not only do they seek oneness with the higher mighty, but they challenge its ideals, daring to converse with the heavens. Composed of Victoria Rose and Stone Filipczak, @ came about in the digital world, however found its roots in Philadelphia and Baltimore. Are You There God? It’s Me, @ follows their first album Mind Palace Music. The EP is reminiscent of hyperpop, found in its glitchy, synth-clad vocals and ambient instrumentation. The assembly of tracks feel grand and playful, in a way evocative of Laurie Anderson, Brian Eno, and the like. With the songs’ cathedral-like moods, airy with reverb and resonance, it seems as if we are at the baptism of electronica.
Inspired and clever, the tracks’ lyrical content includes such sermons like “I can’t feel you anymore/As long as you are where I can’t see you in my dreams anymore,” “Everything around me is escape,” and “I’m goin’ to this soul hole/And I’m never coming back,” found in such songs like the title track, “Order in the Court,” and “Soul Hole”. What this EP flourishes into is a celebration of one’s faith in whatever they devote themselves to — as some things in life, we hold to the standard of God. Interlaced with these notions toward religiosity, @ also integrates some references that allude to the internet and the digital world. For the kids who grew up thinking there were people who lived behind the blue screen, this album declares that worship toward media is an intricate endeavor, especially in a world where reality and fantasy are muddled with blurred lines.
If you think the tracks on this album sound like some segments were extracted from samples, you are totally wrong. They just organically sound like that — @ intentionally adding repetitive lines and punchy beat drops to emulate that kind of effect. The textures are blossomed with crisp, brassy, psychedelic frequencies which open up a terrain of wonderfully distorted waveforms. Mesmeric and trance-like, songs like “Processional” can put one to sleep, through the course of a fluidly atonal lullaby. The songs, like riddles in a cryptic game of charades, are introspective and visionary. The voices that flux along harmonic melodies pose as a kind of automated entity that feels as though it has a life of its own.
Eerie, ominous, and hauntingly prophetic, the tracks packed into this EP are crowded with towers of spacey fluorescence and bedroom lo-fi-esque charm. The duo’s chemistry, most evident in the music’s unionized assonance is what makes the EP plunge into its refined quirks and matured funk. Pastoral and celestial, the EP includes looming woodwinds and caving acoustics to deliver the listener with a wired beating heart, coded to satisfy the cyber soul. In this choral, dainty, and sonically progressive soundscape, the new age is entered through virtual powers.