https://tunetrax.com/beautiful-machines Sun, 19 Apr 2026 01:50:10 -0700 https://tunetrax.com/beautiful-machines/blogs/63/beautiful-machines-craft-the-sounds-of-human-and-technological-symbiosis https://tunetrax.com/beautiful-machines/blogs/63






Beautiful Machines Craft The Sounds Of Human and Technological Symbiosis














August 19, 2016












| By Miss J


















Artist: Beautiful Machines
Album: Bridges  -- Available now on  iTunes ! 
Links: Website
Facebook
Twitter






Beautiful Machines is a great band name, how did you come up with it?
Thank you! Remember the movie, The Abyss ? Those bioluminescent creatures below the crevasse emerged like biological machines, beautiful in their design. The more deep we peer, there seems to be an organization to things, calculated and arbitrary, like a symphony of organisms, both macro and micro. When looking at DNA for instance and all the nano and microscopic interactions happening, there are these little machines carrying out the nature of life. Being struck with the awe of that recognition supplied the inspiration for the name. A name which has been around awhile with Conrad, and carried over from a previous band with an album of the same name.
Your new record, Bridges is part of a trilogy, can you tell us more about that and what each album will represent?
Bridges is the middle album, figuratively bridging two paradigms of existence, and marks a divergence from our previous sound, as we naturally develop. It represents transformation into something new, and what that something new is, will be resolved in the third and longest chapter of the saga, Singularity , which has to do with man merging with machine to overcome our biological limitations.  Disconnect: :Reconnect was our first album where we were discovering our sound, experimenting with what we like and what we don’t, always learning and growing. The idea being, one must disconnect (predominantly from technology or a way of being) in order to reconnect with what is important and significant.  
What other artists would you like to collaborate with?
Conrad:  Jean-Michel Jarre, Danny Elfman, Trent Reznor, Martin Gore, Ladysmith Black Mambazo, Hans Zimmer, Peter Gabriel, Talking Heads
Veli: Slayer
Stef:  Simon Posford of Shpongle, Deadmau5, and Erez Eisen of Infected Mushroom, Björk, Alison Goldfrapp and Thom Yorke
What sparked your aural addiction?
Conrad: Now that I think of it, I would say it was the movies. The emotional draw that certain, now nostalgia-laden, movies really struck a nerve with me. Films like The NeverEnding Story, Blade Runner, The Abyss (aforementioned), Alien , and  Weird Science stand out. When I was 6 or so, I heard Michael Jackson’s Thriller and was captivated by the candy-pop hooks, I loved the guitar riffage of Van Halen in “Beat It” and just thought, this is cool. It became more complicated as time went on, with explorations into classical music, getting weird guitar sounds, and synth sounds. While guitar is my instrument I play live, I spend probably more time in crafting sounds behind the scenes; so for me, I really like finding interesting sounds to generate, curate, and instantiate into the music.
Stef: I remember hearing something by either Rachmaninoff, Chopin, or Brahms at a young age and thinking to myself, finally this is a language that is competent of expressing the potency of my emotions. All these things I was not allowed to speak of, all these feelings that were taboo to express, all these feelings of such complexity that I myself don't even understand, all expressed by a passage of notes that pours forth from the piano like a string of pearls set free to bounce on and tickle my soul. Aural addiction was re-ignited when I learned how to sample and process sounds to make electronic music. That was akin to breaking through to another level of reality, all of a sudden all these possibilities came into being.
Veli: 80s metal album covers. They lured me to pick up albums, put on headphones, and let the sound bang my earholes until I realized it would be super fun to make this noise myself.
Which song do you wish you wrote?
Conrad: “Bohemian Rhapsody” by Queen…and “Rainbow Connection” by Kermit The Frog
Stef: “Uprising” by Muse, “One” by U2
Veli: “Chicken On the Rocks” - Jean-Jacques Perrey
Tell us a fun fact about each band member that not many people know.
How discreet must we be here ? Veli says really funny random computer error message type things, so we’ve decided to make a quote book of his isms. Conrad is really an outdoorsman, loves adventure travel.
Veli: Veli wasn't one of the leading 19th-century French impressionist artists because he can't paint and he was born 100 years too late.
Stef: I want to explore every ancient civilization ever existed around the globe and visit and learn from intentional communities of all kinds all around the world. I think reptiles are super cute and want to have a pet Komodo Dragon who will let me ride on its back as transportation.
Conrad: I DON’T like socks or any garment which restricts you (under-roos). Same goes with bed sheets - if you have a duvee, you’re set, what’s with the extra flat sheet, it gets all mashed up and then you wake up in a pool of your own sweat, tangled up, panting, wondering how on earth did I get here. I DO like outdoor adventures and cuddling with animals.
What is next for Beautiful Machines?
We are currently planning on a US tour with a new booking agent, aiming for some dates in the fall of 2016, with even more college dates focused in the spring of 2017. We are likely producing another music video for “Million Miles”, which we would plan to release around Halloween.  Then in October, Zoolabs invited us to their music accelerator residency, which should be really interesting. During all this time we will be writing the next album, Singularity , the resolve of the trilogy, dealing with overcoming our biological limitations and merging closer and closer with machines. Encompassing a large body of work and taking us on a major sonic exploration, we ambitiously hope to release by Summer 2017. In the winter of 2015, we went to write in Berlin for Bridges , part of the idea was to scout touring in Europe, that could be a potential summer of 2017 as well, but nothing yet on the books. More and more we are finding that planning has less to do with our next destination as being in the flow and realizing where we arrive once we’re there. Perhaps it’s a bit of now-ism that projects us into our future state.
]]> Sat, 20 Aug 2016 12:07:07 -0700 https://tunetrax.com/beautiful-machines/blogs/62/eile-magazine-listen-to-beautiful-machines-bridges https://tunetrax.com/beautiful-machines/blogs/62
https://eile.ie/2016/08/06/listen-beautiful-machines-bridges/






In our Saturday sound slot this week, we feature San Francisco-based cinematic synth pop/rock trio, Beautiful Machines , who recently dropped their sophomore release, Bridges . With vast sonic landscapes and transformative themes, Bridges builds on the band’s debut album, Disconnect : : Reconnect, and is packed with sweeping vocals, colossal instrumentation and deep thematic references that have caught the attention of a fast growing fan base, highlighting a stylistic shift for the band.
The LP signals an evolution for Beautiful Machines, with electronic hooks that are captivating and dreamy. You can follow the band on Facebook at:
https://www.facebook.com/beautifulmachines
Bridges is now available to download on iTunes  and for streaming on Spotify .







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Eddie Jason & CHris - #229: 
This week’s episode of Eddie Jason & Chris features philosophical art rockers Beautiful Machines and Chris Jay, co-writer and co-producer of the new movie The Bet .
The episode kicks off with Jason making fun of the hard candy Eddie bought for the EJC studio. Who doesn’t like hard candy? Jason must be a communist Trump supporter. This leads into a new Chris soundboard prank call involving an outdoors store in which Chris’ sound clips oddly pick up the girl who answers the phone. Robot Chris has more game than real Chris.
Then, Conrad Schuman and Stefanie Ku of Beautiful Machines join the show to talk about their new record, Bridges . The San Francisco act also talks about mind expanding substances, Ku’s work as a sound healer, the brown note and much more. The band has several upcoming tour dates on their Facebook page . Be sure to check them out!
After a quick game of Who Said It: Chris or Hillary Clinton, Chris Jay (Army of Freshman) calls in to talk about his new project, The Bet.  The fun and raunchy movie  tells the story of Denton Baker (Alex Klein – NBC’s  Community ), a loser in life and love who gets into a high stakes bet where he has one summer to find and hook up with every girl he had a crush on while growing up. Hilarity ensues in this movie filled with witty dialogue. Watch it on your favorite VOD service now!
This episode is proudly brought to you by Coors Banquet and CW Hemp             



























]]> Sat, 20 Aug 2016 12:01:34 -0700 https://tunetrax.com/beautiful-machines/blogs/59/new-cd-bridges-review-by-neufutur-magazine https://tunetrax.com/beautiful-machines/blogs/59
by James McQuiston
Beautiful Machines’s Million Miles is an electronic-heavy rock linking together industrial bands with Stabbing Westward and Orgy. A hard-hitting drum sequence is weaved through the track, allowing Beautiful Machines the ability to cross over into EDM formats. The sheer range of the band is presented here, as an instrumental interlude is twisted and turned into something wholly different as the band resumes the main body of the sound. The instrumentation is able to be bold, brash and assertive on its own, but the band is able to unite these pieces into something that will stick around listeners’ heads long after the track has ceased playing.
]]> Thu, 28 Jul 2016 11:58:36 -0700 https://tunetrax.com/beautiful-machines/blogs/58/new-cd-bridges-review-on-mogul https://tunetrax.com/beautiful-machines/blogs/58







Victoria Writer



6d Story Culture













Following their 2014 album Disconnect : : Reconnect, Bridges  serves as the second album in a trilogy. If you like enlightening music that makes you think, this band is definitely  for you.


]]> Thu, 28 Jul 2016 11:54:30 -0700 https://tunetrax.com/beautiful-machines/blogs/57/the-lowdown-under-bridges-cd-release-review https://tunetrax.com/beautiful-machines/blogs/57


by Aza



Dreamy multi-award winning cinematronic outfit Beautiful Machines just dropped their highly anticipated new album Bridges last Friday and we’ve managed to sneakily get our hands on a few choice cuts for you to check out. The San Francisco natives have something instantly attention grabbing, wholly atmospheric and dazzlingly unique with this new album. Here to tempt you in the beautiful sonic world of Beautiful Machine’s Bridges are the tracks Million Miles, Real Love, Free and Sunrise Song.
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