I discovered Italian musician Victor Love, also known as Master Boot Record (MBR). His music seems to be the perfect soundtrack to our lives as we approach the impending hostile takeover by AI (or at least the large corporations that are hoping the Torment Nexus will open up).

MBR not only uses synthetic 8-bit music samples, but also draws a lot of inspiration from IT in his nomenclature. Many of his songs are named after command prompts, and the "master boot record" itself is the name given to the information on the first segment of a storage drive.

Love has stated that his songs are "100% synthesized and 100% impersonal." His discography consists of "avant-garde chiptunes with 486DX-33MHz-64MB processing, heavy metal with synthesizers, and classical symphonic music."

In other words, it is dark, intelligent music for hackers and axemen.

This music demands that you "set yourself up for optimal performance," and it does just that. Frenetic and hyperactive, Love's music is in full throttle from the start. It features fanciful cybernetic trills, ascending operatic chord progressions, and close harmonic fluctuations. One minute we're thoughtfully resonating in a void of glitching pixel chirps, the next we're riding a wave of fuzzy vaporwave, plunged into the depths of a dirty double-kick breakdown.

The sound rolls into a full-bodied, energetic dirge of psychedelic rock and sludge, but with enough excitement built in so you don't have to worry about falling asleep. If you too have an overactive imagination (undiagnosed ADHD?) ) and you like things retro and semi-classical, MBR may be the perfect sound to help you focus.

In fact, typing to finish a sentence can feel like sprinting to BPM.

The album cover itself is another thing. It depicts a defrag menu, a CRT monitor, a floppy disk, and a motherboard in black and white. Why Viking runes are sprinkled here and there is a little unclear, but it's hard to say that they don't add to the ominous atmosphere.

Yes, love, you have transported me to the halls of 8-bit Valhalla. This was just the music I needed to write a thousand-word article about the benefits of turning on XMP in the BIOS.