KCRW Track Premiere: Empathy Test — “Here Is The Place”

Alan Turing’s test to determine whether a machine is capable of thinking like a human was so ahead of it’s time that over 60 years on, it is still utterly fascinating.

Blade Runner introduced the concept into pop culture some 30 plus years ago, and then added an additional question as to whether perhaps they can feel.

This notion is suddenly very present in a slew ofscience fiction films from 2013’s The Machine, Her, Automata with Antonio Banderas and next year’s highly anticipated Ex-Machina.

Into this landscape comes two long time childhood friends from the South of England whose mutual interest and fascination with synthpop and 80s motion picture soundtracks has resulted in a music project called Empathy Test.

Like M83, Purity Ring and CHVRCHES, artists Isaac Howlett and Adam Relf draw from pop and cinematic scores in equal measure and come up with a big dramatic sound that swoons ecstatically between the nostalgic and immediate.

An earlier track, “Losing Touch“, garnered them a ton of attention when it was used to score an animated clip of Liverpool FC.

This lush new track, “Here Is The Place“, laments and celebrates life, death, loneliness and being together, eventually.

It feels.

Empathy Test’s “Throwing Stones“ EP comes out on Stars & Letterson Decemeber 9th.