Better, Like a Machine, available in digital stores and on streaming platforms on March 25.
mariaFausta returns with more rock infused sound, a clear departure from her 2017 debut album, MILLION FACES . Themes touched upon in the self-composed and arranged tracks include memory, transhumanism, fear,and the unconscious. Other key themes include love, change, poetry and dreams–elements we hold close to be spared from the painful inhumanities of life.
BETTER, LIKE A MACHINE – THE TRACKS
The track that opens the record is I´m Betting on You in which a prophetic and distorted voice asks to be saved, supported by a wall of sound created by the band and chorus, always rich and painstakingly arranged by the singer-songwriter.
“I try not to surrender to the chains of alienation, the latter understood as a medicine for the doubts and inconsistencies that we often encounter,” says mariaFausta. “In a system where rapid technological growth and progress do not go hand in hand with emotional growth, and where there is still no awareness of the past, the only possible answer is love.”
Adrenaline Rush, as the singer-songwriter explains, “is a sudden and uncontrollable electric shock that races through our will, our body and our senses, making us vulnerable.
I wrote this about the deep seated scream that comes out when we are forced by something or someone to passively accept a force, an event, or a situation.”
The Colors of Rust “speaks about an abandoned city without wind, poets or dreamers anymore. There’s just a fog and the easiest thing to do seems to be to wait and forget,” explains mariaFausta.
Desert Hive describes the desire to escape from that abandoned city mentioned in The Colors of Rust, to take one’s destiny into one’s own hands just like a queen bee leaving a deserted hive. The arrangement is rich in sonic sensations underscored by the textures of the guitars and voices.
I Want to Paint It All Immersed in a delicate and dreamy atmosphere, this song tells the story of a room painted white in which to search for oneself.
“It was the first track I wrote after Million Faces. It talks about change, an awareness that comes from mistakes and the determination to fix them,” explains mariaFausta
Detach Me From This Path is about the need to be freed from a bond that forces you to keep your feet on the ground. The desire to take your own path and to reach that vortex to which you feel to belong.
“We live an entire life uphill, articulating our senses along cold rocky walls to reach a peak and lose ourselves beyond the horizon of what we love, to remind us that we are also loved,” says mariaFausta
My New Car is a song for travelling, a wish list with the Himalayas as a possible destination and reward for the journey. It tells of a girl who just got a good deal buying a new car and as she drives, she thinks about what is next on her wish list.
Little Girl is a call to be carefree; it speaks about the enthusiasm of adolescence, when dreams and loves are constantly changing. We often feel undecided and along the way we miss out on moments of happiness, which are essential, just as the difficult ones, to forge a new sensitivity.
Better, Like a Machine, the title track, is a more experimental song with sudden odd times and restless moods described by synths.
It tells the story of trans-humanism, in a dialogue between a frustrated crowd that does not accept its human dimension and an individual who does not understand how it is possible to desire the brutalization of one’s own existence.
The power of money, published as a single that anticipates the album. mariaFausta explains it this way: “The lyrics describe the connection we all think we have with money but refers to a deeper concept that the music reveals. It is a power that is quite different from the symbolism of a constantly changing currency. The relentless rhythm and general crescendo that rests on these 150 bpm describe a deep and unshakable truth: you sell and buy a choice, and this free will, rooted in ancient times, is the only currency that is still valid.”
The album closes, like the previous one, with a ballad in which mariaFausta lets herself go in a more intimate voice, accompanied by the arpeggios of a muted piano. The text of
Turn Out The Light was written together with her friend Antonello Soraci and, with this minute of poetry, mariaFausta asks us to turn off the light, closing the second project.
