Grimes sees the future once again and shocker: it’s bleak. Nü metal’s back and artificial intelligence reigns supreme. Propaganda songs are our best hope of making a good impression on the robots now. But the loaded nature of “We Appreciate Power,” the first single off Grimes’ currently untitled fifth album, isn’t necessarily its initial impression. The self-produced song, which features Grimes’ ongoing collaborator HANA, is an immediate onslaught of mutilated noise—distorted metal guitar chug, bloody screams, a guitar loop that conjures fear and demands worship. Flashes of Nine Inch Nails’ Pretty Hate Machine reverberate through the drum programming and synths. Though Grimes’ late-1990s shock-rock sound is less skeletal than what Trent Reznor offered with his 1989 debut, there’s still a parallel: Like Reznor, Claire Boucher knows exactly how to manipulate the machines to conjure the sounds she hears in her nightmares and fantasies. She also has a keen ear for pop hooks and for transgressing what can and should be said near the mainstream. She closes “We Appreciate Power” by calling for the end of the human race and, in a disturbing coo, asking listeners to “submit” to the simulation.
In a statement, the song’s inspiration was attributed to North Korea’s Moranbong, an all-female military band that plays state-sanctioned performances. Moranbong’s more innocuous songs (“Let’s study”) may take on a harmless Eurovision quality out of context, but the Kim Jong-un dictatorship’s embrace of joyful modern music serves a political purpose: to use certain sanitized aspects of Western pop culture as promises of progress to its people, while not acting that way otherwise. “‘We Appreciate Power’ is written from the perspective of a pro-AI girl group propaganda machine who use song, dance, sex, and fashion to spread goodwill towards artificial intelligence (it’s coming whether you want it or not),” Grimes’ statement added. “Simply by listening to this song, the future General AI overlords will see that you’ve supported their message and be less likely to delete your offspring.” To some, the choice to cite as inspiration the real forms of propaganda being used to manipulate millions of oppressed North Koreans will be beyond the pale, particularly if you start parsing the song for a tongue-in-cheekness.
I don’t think Grimes is necessarily joking: The song is meant to provoke, unsettle, and turn the conversation towards an outsized but not entirely unrealistic view of future dystopias, a running theme throughout her work. On that level, “We Appreciate Power” is effective as a piece of concept art—the most “all in” Grimes has gone to date. It invites strong feelings, even if the reaction is as beside the point as, “Wow, Grimes is susceptible to the 20-year nostalgia cycle of trends, too.” If “Freak on a Leash” isn’t a dealbreaker, then the supervillain allure of “We Appreciate Power” might pull you in (it legitimately slaps), but it just as well may leave you weighed down by Grimes’ commitment to the absolute darkest timeline. I have to hand it to her, though: Grimes made me grind to fake robot propaganda.
, Download New Movie Apple gave everyone a glimpse at the future of the iPhone with last year's iPhone X, positioning it at the top of its lineup. With a “notch” and Face ID, the iPhone X was the iPhone of the future, and it came with a price tag that required you to pay EMIs well into the future. The iPhone 8 and iPhone 8 Plus were meant to be the more accessible offerings, continuing Apple's “business as usual” model of delivering solid, incremental updates at prices that were only marginally higher than their predecessors. With 2018, however, it seems the future is here, as Apple has gone all-in with the iPhone X ( Review ) design language across the entire lineup. For the second year in a row, we get not two but three new iPhone models, but this time, they all look pretty much the same — like the iPhone X, but at different sizes. Physically, the iPhone XR sits between the iPhone XS and iPhone XS Max . It's priced in iPhone 8 Plus territory, which means Apple has elim...
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, Download New Movie We are sending away 2018 and we look back and see what were the most popular phones over the past year. While there are 20 phones in the yearly selection, the list of manufacturers is scarce. To be more precise, two out of every three devices come from either Xiaomi or Samsung. Samsung brought us 7 of the most popular phones in 2018 - hardly a surprise that the world's largest manufacturer dominates the popularity chart. Somewhat less expected is that Xiaomi got 6. Last year , the number for the Korean manufacturer was the same, but the Chinese maker is up by one, showcasing that the global trend of Xiaomi catching up to the big guys is on every level. The most popular phone of 2018 was the Redmi Note 5 Pro and it completely smashed any competition. It was so popular, that the other two Xiaomis following couldn’t gather the same number of hits even if they combined their powers. Samsung eventually caught up with the Galaxy A8 (2018). The love for midrangers is...
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