New York-based electronic hardcore duo, Machine Girl, recently played 2 nights at The Regency Ballroom in SF and ec0fr3ak was there to speak with Matthew Stephenson before the band hit the stage. Tune in on Monday, December 9th at 4pm to hear their conversation.
New album, MG Ultra (via Future Classic),is the culmination of a decade long awareness of this oft undeclared fact: what we fear about the future is evidenced in the crises taking place now. In the face of these themes, Machine Girl offers the harshest rebuke.
MG Ultra, their sixth studio album, and first since 2020, could be interpreted as double entendre: a kind of manic collision between the different genres explored in previous MG releases in their most distilled, ultimate form, alongside the obvious CIA reference to the MK Ultra human experiments they began conducting in the 1950’s. MG Ultra playfully institutionalizes the battle against alienation, dysmorphia, estrangement, commodification, and the gentrification of the mind through a complex sonic narrative.
Beginning in 2012, Machine Girl is a project born from the hyperfixations of its progenitor, Matthew Stephenson. Taking cues from the character of Chicago footwork and a semblance of hypermobile, wide-ranging cultural references that stem from digital cultures, Machine Girl has been interchangeable with DIY culture, a lo-fi sound with a distinctly hi-fi, maximalist cultural vision.
