Pomegranate Tiger: Beauty In The Singularity
Being able to create something progressive often requires complicated ideas being laid out in way that feels both multifaceted and yet beautiful at the same time. POMEGRANATE TIGER returns to us with next album, All Input Is Error, a stunning record that plays with time, ideas around AI and how art can be created. We caught up with central member and multi-instrumentalist Martin Andres about the record.
There’s instant appeal to thinking about the future, and the music that POMEGRANATE TIGER has created has a very focused idea at its centre. “All Input Is Error is what humanity and civilization will go through in the next ten years and is just trying to bring some awareness to the idea,” he boils it down. However, the concepts and ideas in themselves are far from simple. There’re huge implications to the ‘what if?’ that comes with thinking about AI.
“People have no idea what’s coming,” Andres goes on to explain. “Experts claim AI is a more powerful technology and weapon system than the internet or a nuclear bomb ever was. We read these things and know them to be true at this point, but what does it really mean for us? Any opinion or advice offered by a human to a robot or AI system one day will be completely pointless. Any human input will one day be error in trying to advance any sort of technology. It’s called the singularity. Theoretical physicists and the forefront of technological innovation seem to be racing towards the same destination wherever that may be. Where will that leave is? These are the reasons I believe All Input Is Error as an album title will only become more relevant as time goes on.”
In the same way we can’t predict the future of AI, POMEGRANATE TIGER also couldn’t have counted on what this latest release would be come when it started. “AIIE became what was a ridiculous evolution of sound that could not have been predicted in any way before the writing process began,” he tells us. “The original idea was to make an EP which featured only classical, acoustic and hybrid guitars with no distortion. A focus on clean guitars, melody and harmony was the primary original motivation behind needing to write. Four years later AIIE is nowhere near a three-track prog ‘acoustic’ album. As the music progressed and evolved over the following years, there ended up being a lot more to say and explore musically than just three ‘acoustic’ tracks. It’s become quite the mouthful I’d say.”
There’s a certain lilt and feel to POMEGRANATE TIGER that has a very emotional edge. While predominantly instrumental, All Input Is Error and POMEGRANATE TIGER’s back catalogue overall plays with perceptions of musical storytelling through the use of time signatures and complex melodies. “You’ve reminded me of a quote I fell in love with recently,” says Andres. “’A painter paints pictures on canvas, but musicians paint their pictures on silence & time itself’. How cool is that? A musician’s canvas is time itself. [this is like a] modified Leopold Stokowski quote. With this record, the idea was definitely more to tell ten different stories all related to the idea of All Input Is Error all while decorating 45 minutes of time with interesting sounds. I want listeners to be delighted and taken on a sonic journey that maximizes replay value. Having that said, there was also a tremendous amount of personal satisfaction in creating the music itself. Very little of it was inspired by rock or metal music.”
With the record being incredibly lush with its progressive approach to being heavily regimented in it’s timings, but beautiful in it’s execution, there’s something to be said about art as a concept to this album. Moreover, AI art is something that’s touched upon within POMEGRANATE TIGER’s work here, it begs the question if there’s room for music to be both mathematical and creative?
“So, I think math itself can be art,” Andres contemplates. “Think of all the scientific discoveries mankind has made through generations. All technological innovations, first started with a nerd playing with some numbers because they just liked math and were curious about the world. So, math literally can be synonymous with exploration and discovery. They can go hand-in-hand if you need them to. Although I wouldn’t say I explicitly think about beauty & technicality working together or even being juxtaposed, but I do love both of those things separately. It is important that the listener can feel taken back by beauty, and also taken back by technical rhythms. I want the music to elicit strong emotional reactions and the best way forward I believe is to pay very strong attention to highly detailed craftsmanship. God is in the details.”
It’s been some years between records for POMEGRANATE TIGER, and it’s interesting to hear how the music has filtered a concentrated form that feels the benefit of experience and is all the more polished for it. “I have more tools to choose from and they all have been further refined,” Andres agrees. “I now have the confidence to say that I can be more deliberate with the use of all these tools and how they are used together. Even though the album is a mouthful, if I decide I now like vanilla, I’m okay with that song being that flavour. It doesn’t need to also be chocolate, and cookies n cream and every other flavour. Vanilla has its purpose, and its great at what it does and nothing else does vanilla quite like well… vanilla.”
All Input Is Error is out now via self-release.
For more information on POMEGRANATE TIGER like their official page on Facebook.