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| Practice might be the way for human musicians to get to Carnegie Hall, but if you're a robot, it's not so tough -- as long as your programmers have given you the proper advantages. Meet the Z-Machines, a band made entirely of robots. There's Mach, a 78-fingered guitarist; Ashura, a 22-armed drummer; and Cosmo, a robot that plays keyboards with lasers. On paper, they're impressive, with only one thing keeping them from a record deal: They can't write music.
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When a team of University of Tokyo roboticists created the Z-Machines last year, it asked several artists to develop music the robots could be programmed to play, and the U.K.-based electronic composer was among them. His submission was a song called "Sad Robot Goes Funny," but after it was finished Squarepusher (aka Tom Jenkinson) wasn't done with his droid friends. He ended up writing an entire EP of material for the 'bots called, appropriately,
Music for Robots, which was released last week.
