Posts Tagged ‘.SYS Machine’

.SYS Machine – Parts Unknown

Posted: 16 April 2026 in Albums, Reviews
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Glitchmode Recordings – 10th April 2026

Christopher Nosnibor

.SYS Machine’s third album is the first to be released through the Glitchmode Recordings imprint, home to Dave McAnally’s main project, Derision Cult, among notable names. And on Parts Unknown, .SYS Machine continue to expand their sonic palette, while still maintaining close connections with influences like Depeche Mode and Nine Inch Nails, but also Peter Gabriel and Porcupine Tree.

One thing which is key to .SYS Machine’s work is its proximity to the present: McAnally draws on his environment and events in real-time, and while previous album Graceful Isolation was the ‘lockdown’ album, Parts Unknown is, as they put it, a work which ‘reflects on navigating an age of uncertainty—both spiritually and technologically—touching on themes of recovery, loss, and the uneasy process of entering new phases of life.’ And once again, ‘the album also features guest vocal contributions from Kimberly Kornmeier of Bow Ever Down on two tracks, adding a dynamic that recalls the atmospheric interplay heard in artists like Garbage and Portishead’.

These are unquestionably daunting times: the world is at war – not all fighting the same war, but the point stands – and while many are joyfully embracing AI as an assistant, a creator of amusing artwork, a companion, or a therapist, just as many are fearful for their livelihoods. The future has never looked so uncertain, our places in the world as individuals so precarious.

‘Everyday just feels like the gravity’s gone’, is the refrain on the album’s first song, ‘Gravity’ – and it’s not about being serious. There is a sense of being cut loose from the planet, spinning free from all that is known.

Single release ‘Fading’, one of the Kimberly Kornmeier vocal leads, is altogether slower and more overtly reflective in tone – almost a trip-hop ballad, whereby the standard electronic backing, with its twitchy beats, is augmented with guitar. ‘Are you lost in yourself / I think you’re fading away’, she sings, sounding lost in herself, too. And perhaps the message really is that we’re all lost, but many don’t even realise – or have the time or headspace to reflect long enough to realise. It’s perhaps fitting that at a time when the world seems to be spinning at a faster pace, and waking each morning brings with it a combination relief at still being alive and the anxiety over what may have happened overnight and what the coming day may hold, that Parts Unknown manifests as a slower, sparser-sounding work, which steps back and creates space and time for contemplation. ‘Home’, the second Kornmeier cut is, in contrast, quite possibly the album’s poppiest, and more than justifies the Garbage references.

‘Resonance’ touches on the contradictions of life in the present: ‘I can see the future it’s not certain everything’s just fine / Maybe if we wait just longer everything will be alright’. We tell ourselves, perhaps even convince ourselves everything’s fine, but ultimately, it’s just a hope, wishful thinking that it will be. Because without hope, what have we actually got?

The expansive ‘Collapse’ is, contrary to its title, the expansive sound of hope as sweeping, cinematic synths soar over a delicate acoustic guitar, while the final track, ‘Closure’, leaves us in a more ponderous place, mining a strong seam of Depeche Mode / NIN electro-led instrumentation which blossoms into a powerful, uplifting finale. But is it the sound of true hope, or simply a desire to convince that hope still exists? And where does the line lie between hope and delusion? These are questions to mull while absorbing the details of Parts Unknown. Unknown and unknowable, none of us knows what’s around the corner. With Parts Unknown, .SYS Machine prompt contemplation with some well crafted soundscapes and neatly-tempered beats.

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.SYS Machine – Doubtless

Posted: 11 January 2026 in Reviews, Singles and EPs
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Glitch Mode Recordings – 9th January 2026

It’s been a little while since we last heard from .SYS Machine, when they slipped ‘Graceful Isolation’ out in the wake of the pandemic lockdowns. One reason for this is that Dave McAnally has been busy with industrial side-project Derision Cult – but with ‘Doubtless’, .SYS Machine presage the arrival of a new album, Parts Unknown due out in April.

While the dark electronic pop of .SYS Machine is sonically more accessible than Derision Cult McAnally’s lyrics have a tendency to draw on the experience of living through our trying times, and ‘Doubtless’ is no exception, exploring as it does the challenge of ‘maintaining sanity in an increasingly turbulent and chaotic world’.

The vocal melody and McAnally’s drawling intonation bring something of a country feel, which is quite a contrast to the metronomic pulsating disco beat and the synths, which are airy and even hint at a sense of optimism. There are strong hints of Violator-era Depeche mode woven into the fabric of the song, particularly in the chorus, and it balances broodiness with a certain buoyancy. The way the elements interlace is intriguing, and far from obvious – meaning this is a grower rather than an instant grab.

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.SYS Machine – Graceful Isolation

Posted: 6 January 2022 in Albums
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3rd December 2021

Christopher Nosnibor

If there’s ever been an emerging theme across music of all genres in the last year and a half, it’s isolation. Yes, if a global pandemic has achieved one thing, it’s brought everyone together in their feelings of isolation.

And so it is that we learn that the tracks on Graceful Isolation ‘address the feelings of isolation and coming to terms with new norms that the past year has brought. The title is derived from the fact that over the course of the album, none of the collaborators were ever in the same room.

One could counteract that in creating an album featuring numerous collaborations (notably Kimberly Kornmeier of brooding orchestral electro goth act Bow Ever Down on vocals on three songs, but also a slew of remixers), Dave McAnally has been far from alone despite being forced to work in physical isolation, yielding an album that demonstrates that distance is no object and geography is a state of mind, even if it is no substitute for proximity.

‘Poison My Skin’ makes for an atmospheric opener, with stark, minimal synths and drum machine providing a cold backdrop. ‘You’re never gonna touch me again’, Kimberly croons in a detached, robotic monotone, with subtle hints of Siouxsie, while giving voice to the thoughts that have echoed around my head that there are likely many people I have seen, heard, and been in the presence of for the last time in my life. I don’t miss the office, I don’t miss the people I used to work alongside in that artificial, uncomfortable, unnatural space, and yet… well, none of us expected that way of life to be curtailed, and certainly not in the way it was, an instant switch-off. March 2020, on being told to go home to work, I never anticipated being away more than a few weeks. And here we are… people have moved on; people have left; people are no longer with us. It’s been a long and painful couple of years.

‘All the Pieces’ and in particular ‘Impossible Dreams’ are stripped-back and sparse in their arrangements – not quite demos, but certainly skeletal, with stuttering drum machines providing the brittle spine to the songs. The lack of flesh on the bones is integral to the appeal here.

‘Drowning in the Past’ and ‘Illusions’ are tense, queasy in their taut atmosphere. McAnally resumes vocal duties, and said vocals are pegged low in the mix, compressed, accentuating the dislocation and distance. The former pegs a particularly expansive guitar solo to some nagging synths and comes on like a proggy James Ray, and it’s some good shit if you’re on the market for dark, gothy electropop.

My only niggle – surprisingly or perhaps not so much – would be that the thirteen tracks on the album consist of only five individual songs, and with three mixes of ‘All The Pieces’ slap bang in the middle, in addition to the original version, plus three versions of ‘Drowning in the Past’ it’s does get a little bit repetitive, and it may have worked better as an EP and a remix EP rather than a full-length album in its own right. Put another way, I’d play the grooves off the EP, but would probably only spin the remixes every now and again – not because they’re poor remixes, but because the original cuts hang together so well, it feels like a fully-realised document that requires no adornment.

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