Sis
Every once in a while a group arrives on the scene with a sound that breaks the conventional systems of description. Every once in a while a group makes a sound arranged in such a way that it reaches some of the lesser accessed areas of cognition & elicits responses that echo cryptic memories & previously felt (and sometimes forgotten) feelings. Introducing San Francisco experimental sorcerers Sis who illustrate an aesthetic that angles impressionism to underline abstract ideas that are conveyed through tones that evoke humanism mined out of concepts & constructs of mechanisms. Drawing inspiration from an artificial intelligence conversation heard on a podcast, leader Jenny Gillespie Mason began sketching a song with an OP1 synthesizer, an oddly tuned ukulele and an innovative arrangement manifested from hearing the quip the machines will be learning to use our machines.
Presenting the world premiere of their single “My Machine”, Sis sends us a snapshot of the singularity & subjects that pertain to our complicated relationships with technology (as well as the even more intricate bond that autonomous objects share with each other in exchanges of date transmissions & more). Jenny & the band hone in on those places where our human connections resembles the functions of A.I. programming where devices learn the idiosyncrasies of other operating systems and user interfaces in what we all understand now to be the overstated & ubiquitous internet of things. Sis embarks upon territories that have captivated the minds of folks from Kubrick, Spielberg to Kurzweil where the conjuring of CPU functions of communications is mirrored up against our own server platforms of dialogues that span from the casual to the candid. The five minute plus ballad evokes the not-so-distant future of today where we understand our own odd exchanges like the communiques between the machines that have become an inextricable intra-net of our everyday operations (and arguably integral to most modes of functionality). Mason along with Sis present a portrait of the human condition as witnessed within the web of our digital reliances in conjunction with the protocols that sync our mutual systems with one another.
Jenny Mason from Sis shared the following insights on the ambitious new single:
“My Machine” came from a few sources: listening to a Sam Harris podcast on A.I. and the phrase my machine will be learning your machine and thinking that would make a great lyric. I could possibly apply it to how we learn each other over time in longterm relationships. If we can truly learn the machine of our partner, their habits, neuroses, and yearnings, and respond to those idiosyncrasies with nuance and skill; at times it feels like the two individuals become one perfect machine. My son had tuned my ukulele in a very strange way and I was playing around with what he’d left. I was also recording the little noises my infant son was making and turning those into melodies. So the lyric, the ukulele and the cell of a melody taken from my infant’s ululations all cohered into this little song. When we broke it out in the studio, our first instinct as we’d been working so heavily with beats, drum machines and percussion at that point, was to keep the percussion very spare. Andrew Maguire’s stick play provided haunting machinery; combined with Rob Shelton’s mournful, almost bleating synth sound, and Carly Bond’s plaintive bass clarinet, we were able to create a delicate, spacious yet dissonant interface of warm and cold.
Native Cat Recordings was born from my introduction to the San Francisco music scene in 2017 and all the wonderful people I met there, from wanting to support the music of this very special little scene that revolves around the all-analog studio of Tiny Telephone, founded and run by John Vanderslice. It’s more like a family than a label—we all play on each other’s projects, produce and engineer each other, help with design and outreach and tours. It’s been a wonderful way to step back into music after a few years off raising two young children and a pleasant rupture from doing it on my own for so long as a solo musician putting out my own stuff.
The new Sis single “My Machine” will be available April 28 from Native Cat Recordings. Listen to more from Sis via Native Cat.
Catch Sis playing April 28 in Oakland, CA at Tiny Telephone Oakland.
