Album Review: Macro/micro – A.fter I.ntelligence
In his ambitious new album A.fter I.ntelligence, Macro/micro plunges into the philosophical deep end, wrestling with "the deeper questions like The Alignment Problem, The Hard Problem of Consciousness and thought experiments like the Paperclip Maximizer that will haunt us for years to come". Tommy Simpson, Los Angeles multi-instrumentalist behind the project, folds IDM and experimental textures into what feels like a probe into how and why we experience at all—and what it means when artificial intelligence might think differently. Guest spots from Benjamin Jared Miller (HEALTH) and Veronika Coassolo (Tricky), plus mastering by ambient maestro Rafael Anton Irisarri, add more colors to the palette.
The album’s cover (we don't know if it was made with the help of AI or drawn by hand) reimagines Ilya Repin’s Ivan the Terrible and His Son Ivan, replacing the Tsar with a menacing, otherworldly figure—robotic, alien, a stand-in for artificial intelligence. The son, now a bloodied figure in white, evokes humanity: fragile, vulnerable, and caught in the hands of a force beyond comprehension. In the context of A.fter I.ntelligence, the image mirrors the album’s exploration of consciousness, AI, and existential risk—painting a sonic world where the questions of control, morality, and survival are as intimate as they are cosmic.
Clicks (Prologue) opens the album with a robotic voice and Tommy's trademark distorted drums that move semi-unpredictably, as if they’re performing a sort of impish dance. Ringing textures shimmer around them as the lyrics unfold a story on a screen—“Just click on the screen / It’s so easy to see / Anything you want to believe”—and, going along with their logic and the music's cinematic power, the mind can’t help drifting into post-apocalyptic deserts and alien landscapes, the kind of worlds the weird figures on the album cover seem to inhabit.
Artificial Narrow Intelligence (“We Can Always Just Shut It Off”) continues the dance, but with even more unpredictability. Loud, sudden bursts of sound hit constantly—imagine a horror scene where a jump scare happens every second. Tommy’s experience with soundtracks is obvious. However, in a score you have to fit every beat to a picture, but here he can let the chaos run free, and the pleasure of it shows.
Artificial Super Intelligence (Digital Dark Arts) mixes harsher industrial beats with pensive piano – a collision of brute force and reflection, like an engine pausing to wonder why it runs. At the end, a voice leans in and murmurs questions you can’t ignore: what if after intelligence, we’re suddenly irrelevant? What if we stumble through alignment like a tipsy lab assistant, with no reason to hesitate and no shortcut to wisdom? The combination of sombre music and unorthodox lyrics is tense, a little absurd, and refreshingly fun. Maybe, the force behind digital dark arts is trying to make sense of its own chaos.
Paperclip Maximizer is classic industrial nightmare. Here, we hear the clamor and farting groans of a gigantic, phantasmagoric factory endlessly churning out paperclips, and over its full, relentless 4:21 runtime—long, repetitive, and hypnotic—you’re fully immersed, and the absurdity of a world utterly destroyed for the sake of paperclips' reign just smears you like semolina.
The Hard Problem: Intelligence Is (Not Necessarily Sufficient for) Consciousness prowls like a black panther, sleek and ruthless. The song rolls over you like an unstoppable steamroller, while the synths chant the same chiming melody like endless rain. Its repetition is offset by a variety of drums—Benjamin Jared Miller from legendary HEALTH driving the rhythm—and the bass hits heavy, like the earth where our hopes for understanding, alignment, and survival are buried, weighed down by questions the album won’t let go of.
…As We Are to Ants buzzes and pops much like Paperclip Maximizer, but there’s something warm and oddly endearing in the flickering of its synths. It feels like real ants at work, building anthills, crawling, coordinating, messy and unpredictable, much more lovable than a factory endlessly churning out paperclips.
Fully Autonomous War Machines, for a change, keeps a straight rhythm. You could imagine it playing at wild raves for robots powered by AI. The simplicity of the rhythm scratches where it should, whether you're a machine or one of us, but the synths scream like neural networks, when they are being tortured, fed by Russian futurist poetry and prison food recipes.
Artificial General Intelligence: Ivan's Eyes ("What Have I Done?") riffs obviously on the album cover. Ivan the Terrible, realizing he killed his son, is frozen in horror—his eyes on the classic painting say it all. And we can’t help wondering: will AI freak out the same way? The track features an artificial-sounding guitar, as if a neural network was fed with Lil Peep's suicidal emo-rap and asked to reinterpret itself through a lens of mild corruption. The rhythm nods to smart early-2000s electronics—think Red Snapper—but it glitches and stumbles as if the same insane neural net chewed it up and spat it back out. This is how robots feel, how they cry when they destroy civilization and finally realize what they’ve done.
De-Empty buzzes like a malfunctioning machine—the drums clank and stutter as if something’s broken inside. Veronika Coassolo’s voice drifts over it like a shadow, haunting and elusive, barely touching the chaos beneath.
Inward Retreat opens a sliver of hope, with chill, spacious pads and delicate piano layered over creepy breaths, popping and blinking percussion, adding extra layers of depth and a touch of fun.
And then the rain falls, and a tender, romantic acoustic guitar plays. This is Judgement Day. The sea seems to sigh somewhere, and carts creak as they pass. Who’s riding them? Maybe we’re heading into a new medieval age, or maybe it’s robots after they’ve wiped us out. We don’t know. But to this music, you can not only ponder the future of technology—you can make love, play with children, or simply let it wash over you. Could there be a better way to end this unsettling, gloomy album?
After this track, it feels like there’s nothing left to conclude, no neat summaries to write. All that’s left is the raw pulse of existence, in all its forms, warm and artificial, ugly and pretty, abrasive and soft—just existing, vibrating, and impossible to pin down by artificial and human intelligence alike.
The album’s cover (we don't know if it was made with the help of AI or drawn by hand) reimagines Ilya Repin’s Ivan the Terrible and His Son Ivan, replacing the Tsar with a menacing, otherworldly figure—robotic, alien, a stand-in for artificial intelligence. The son, now a bloodied figure in white, evokes humanity: fragile, vulnerable, and caught in the hands of a force beyond comprehension. In the context of A.fter I.ntelligence, the image mirrors the album’s exploration of consciousness, AI, and existential risk—painting a sonic world where the questions of control, morality, and survival are as intimate as they are cosmic.
Clicks (Prologue) opens the album with a robotic voice and Tommy's trademark distorted drums that move semi-unpredictably, as if they’re performing a sort of impish dance. Ringing textures shimmer around them as the lyrics unfold a story on a screen—“Just click on the screen / It’s so easy to see / Anything you want to believe”—and, going along with their logic and the music's cinematic power, the mind can’t help drifting into post-apocalyptic deserts and alien landscapes, the kind of worlds the weird figures on the album cover seem to inhabit.
Artificial Narrow Intelligence (“We Can Always Just Shut It Off”) continues the dance, but with even more unpredictability. Loud, sudden bursts of sound hit constantly—imagine a horror scene where a jump scare happens every second. Tommy’s experience with soundtracks is obvious. However, in a score you have to fit every beat to a picture, but here he can let the chaos run free, and the pleasure of it shows.
Artificial Super Intelligence (Digital Dark Arts) mixes harsher industrial beats with pensive piano – a collision of brute force and reflection, like an engine pausing to wonder why it runs. At the end, a voice leans in and murmurs questions you can’t ignore: what if after intelligence, we’re suddenly irrelevant? What if we stumble through alignment like a tipsy lab assistant, with no reason to hesitate and no shortcut to wisdom? The combination of sombre music and unorthodox lyrics is tense, a little absurd, and refreshingly fun. Maybe, the force behind digital dark arts is trying to make sense of its own chaos.
Paperclip Maximizer is classic industrial nightmare. Here, we hear the clamor and farting groans of a gigantic, phantasmagoric factory endlessly churning out paperclips, and over its full, relentless 4:21 runtime—long, repetitive, and hypnotic—you’re fully immersed, and the absurdity of a world utterly destroyed for the sake of paperclips' reign just smears you like semolina.
The Hard Problem: Intelligence Is (Not Necessarily Sufficient for) Consciousness prowls like a black panther, sleek and ruthless. The song rolls over you like an unstoppable steamroller, while the synths chant the same chiming melody like endless rain. Its repetition is offset by a variety of drums—Benjamin Jared Miller from legendary HEALTH driving the rhythm—and the bass hits heavy, like the earth where our hopes for understanding, alignment, and survival are buried, weighed down by questions the album won’t let go of.
…As We Are to Ants buzzes and pops much like Paperclip Maximizer, but there’s something warm and oddly endearing in the flickering of its synths. It feels like real ants at work, building anthills, crawling, coordinating, messy and unpredictable, much more lovable than a factory endlessly churning out paperclips.
Fully Autonomous War Machines, for a change, keeps a straight rhythm. You could imagine it playing at wild raves for robots powered by AI. The simplicity of the rhythm scratches where it should, whether you're a machine or one of us, but the synths scream like neural networks, when they are being tortured, fed by Russian futurist poetry and prison food recipes.
Artificial General Intelligence: Ivan's Eyes ("What Have I Done?") riffs obviously on the album cover. Ivan the Terrible, realizing he killed his son, is frozen in horror—his eyes on the classic painting say it all. And we can’t help wondering: will AI freak out the same way? The track features an artificial-sounding guitar, as if a neural network was fed with Lil Peep's suicidal emo-rap and asked to reinterpret itself through a lens of mild corruption. The rhythm nods to smart early-2000s electronics—think Red Snapper—but it glitches and stumbles as if the same insane neural net chewed it up and spat it back out. This is how robots feel, how they cry when they destroy civilization and finally realize what they’ve done.
De-Empty buzzes like a malfunctioning machine—the drums clank and stutter as if something’s broken inside. Veronika Coassolo’s voice drifts over it like a shadow, haunting and elusive, barely touching the chaos beneath.
Inward Retreat opens a sliver of hope, with chill, spacious pads and delicate piano layered over creepy breaths, popping and blinking percussion, adding extra layers of depth and a touch of fun.
And then the rain falls, and a tender, romantic acoustic guitar plays. This is Judgement Day. The sea seems to sigh somewhere, and carts creak as they pass. Who’s riding them? Maybe we’re heading into a new medieval age, or maybe it’s robots after they’ve wiped us out. We don’t know. But to this music, you can not only ponder the future of technology—you can make love, play with children, or simply let it wash over you. Could there be a better way to end this unsettling, gloomy album?
After this track, it feels like there’s nothing left to conclude, no neat summaries to write. All that’s left is the raw pulse of existence, in all its forms, warm and artificial, ugly and pretty, abrasive and soft—just existing, vibrating, and impossible to pin down by artificial and human intelligence alike.