In a world of increasingly banal synthwave artists with purple pink nostalgia aesthetics and dollar store Tiffany songs, I’m always going back to a band I grew up with: Machines of Loving Grace, named after the 1967 poem by Richard Brautigan, All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace. Arguably an early cyberpunk poem though quite optimistic about the future of cybernetics in a way the genre is not. The band featured evocative often political lyrics that my 13 year old mind wasn’t ready for in 1992 when I stole their first album from Streetside Records. Liberia? South Africa? Opium? It made me feel cool and adult. Not as heavy as bands like Nine Inch Nails or Ministry; their first album definitely has a dance influence, while later albums, a heavier industrial guitar-driven sound. Their first self-titled 1991 album to me remains a quintessential underrated cyberpunk album; the two follow-ups are great however. Much darker musically with no drop in lyrical quality. The singer now teaches visual art in California.
https://youtu.be/jMA07KEI7JA?si=Si-91SGcBu58rp7M