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The Techno​-​Optimist Melonfesto

by TORLEY 🍉🎹

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nattery torley always knows what i need Favorite track: overdone.
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overdone 02:00
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Psych Chic 02:00
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Early 1990s 02:00
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Damn Hugs 02:00
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Hypertenets 02:00
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Fill Up Lass 02:00
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SoManyLayers 02:00
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IDM Affair 02:00
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Agiphile 02:00
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Tubby Baby 02:00
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about

This liminal album represents holding onto constant preferences amidst a time of great change. Style flows out of the things you like coming back to, like a diner with comfort food or Apple Computers. By now I live with how often I combine accessible ("catchy") melody with the stranger side of sound design, finding ways to add spice to familiar chord progressions... like a self-driving car taking you down the street you grew up on.

And this is where I find myself now, finding TECHNO-tools that either (1) do what I wanted all along or (2) surprise me with combos. Every album I've done in the past several years has cultivated its use of state-of-the-art tools, including the cover art — from one gen(eration/erative) to the next. This cover is AI-generated clay, a metaphor for how we shape reality with these cools, and once we will it into being, it can't be undone. I find a humor in the simplicity of this core theme of mine, the "neon watermelon". And I've honed in on strong preferences, like instruments/effects that have random preset pickers and MPE (every mini-gesture is a micro-story). And to what end? Making the music I want to in less time — not to rush, but because it's worth differentiating the scenic route from the needless slog.

To me, it's all TECHNOlogy-based music, always has been. From the Detroit mavericks that sprung forth from Alvin & Heidi Toffler writing about the TECHNO rebels to human-machine music's eventual assimilation and entrenchment into popular music consciousness. I owe debt to these pioneers that I repay with my exploring the extremities and bringing back a chronology of comfort, from a hedonihilistic zone that's ever-expanding.

The release date is of course an homage. The title is also that, a play on "The Techno-Optimist Manifesto" from Marc Andreessen and the minds of many others, bold statements that — even if you strongly disagree — it'll hopefully irk you to build something. 'Cuz that's what comes out of this. Words are the signposts to the heartland of tomorrow's experiences. I found myself incredibly inspired by said Manifesto, because I've seen many bad ideas (see "The Enemy" section) hold back the evolution of electronic music.

So I must do my part to seed and grow the ideas that play into what I want to hear.

credits

released March 3, 2024

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about

TORLEY 🍉🎹 Seattle, Washington

I make sonic science fiction: short sound stories with massive melodies and vibrant arrangements. I’ve discovered them from alternate realities, in an ongoing research project to expand the edges of expressive electronic music.

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