With recent singles ‘over/over’ and ‘buttons’ on Future Gods, Guatemalan-born, Montreal-based artist Hockitay has explored the intersection of the human and the digital within the contemporary moment. The former existed “where loneliness and restlessness overlap,” as we wrote in a preview, “that curiously digital phenomenon where even an empty room can now be overwhelming.” While the latter took things even further to confront, as we continued, “the technological encroachment on our lives, asking how we might hope to maintain a sense of authentic self in a world automated by things like AI.” The result was a pair of strangely melancholic tracks that proved more than a little eerie. A fitting soundtrack for the present tip towards the surreal as algorithms and robots attempt to worm ever deeper into everyday existence.
However, Hockitay’s latest single ‘two crows’ is something different. Not so much a pivot from its predecessors as an attempt to reclaim the old organic world from the automated present. As the title suggests, the track draws upon the traditional augury of a pair of crows, supposedly an omen of good luck and partnership, to counter an otherwise hostile environment, looking to push beyond the modern confines of finances or even the looming weight of personal mortality to find comfort in the grander, more enduring cycles of nature.
Watch the video directed by David S. Blouin and Buvard below:
‘two crows’ is out now via Future Gods and available from the Hockitay Bandcamp page.