I have a lot less trouble embracing the candied music and bad lyrics of pop stars than I do of bands that run around sporting the label “underground” to describe what they do. Don’t get me wrong, I’m still a sucker for the dance beat of Cursor Miner’s song war games used in Torrent Raider‘s promo video above, but it’s hard not to feel guilty about liking it when the lyrics of the first chorus read:
No more fighting one to one,
Just a program to be run.
Press the button watch it go.
Set you equal to zero.
I mean with lyrics like this you have ask if the band is even trying. The project itself of course is a little more complicated than the music, but I do wish that creator Aaron Meyers had found a slightly better track than what is provided by Kraftwerk meets Gary Newman/Tubeway Army, meets Autechre. A Rhizome commission, Torrent Raider largely targets tech and copyright geeks asking users of bit torrent networks to collect evidence against their copyright challenging peers in order to reap bounties. As far as concepts go it’s pretty good, but the video is a little cheesy sci-fi for my tastes, and the visualization doesn’t really tell us very much about how the project works. My hope for the final game is that it manages to look a little less like computer tech boy candy, and a little more like the piece I know I’d want to play.
Additional note: Commentor Peter Brinson observes on Aaron Meyer’s site that a higher resolution video would benefit the piece and increase the popularity of the game. I have to say, I whole heartedly agree.
Comments on this entry are closed.