I’ve just read the book Neon Screams by Kit Mackintosh and it’s about how autotune has mutated over the past fifteen years. He mentions music artists who use autotune like Young Thug and Future and newer artists like SahBabii and Baby Keem. For me, when I first listened to their music I thought: “This is what I thought the music of the future would sound like.”
IN__You mean when you first listened to Future you thought “Oh yeah, he really is the future”?
ML__*Laughs* More Young Thug than Future. When I listened to Young Thug I was just like, “what the fuck?” It’s so new. There’s no sound that existed like that previously.
IN__Do you mean specifically the way he uses autotune?
ML__Well in Neon Screams Mackintosh was talking about how these artists are making music that is emotional and psychedelic, but it’s all channeled through technology, which produces a very strange effect. It’s essentially the realisation that, by making yourself into a cyborg, you can be more human.
IN__Yeah, it’s a way of protecting yourself. You can be more vulnerable and open about uncomfortable things because this protection, this distance, is already baked into it. It’s you saying it but it’s not your voice. It’s like wearing a mask.
ML__Exactly, yeah. What fascinates me about the relationship between distance and intimacy I mentioned before when we were talking about Fiorucci is that I think it’s a part of the contemporary condition because everything is mediated now. You’re always trying to get closer to something or wanting to feel something while being in this alienated, mediated state. You have to find your own complicated dance or relationship with things in order to induce some kind of aliveness. You have to go to something quite cold and mechanical in order to feel more human.