The Instruction Manual

I’d not heard a robotic choir before, and won’t hear one again based on The Instruction Manual’s self-titled debut album. The Glasgow-based trio of Ollie Hawker, Katie Muir and Scott Crawford Morrison state: ‘We’re interested in the emotional affect of old technologies when they’re liberated from the yoke of technological progress. In an era where AI tries to enable computers to create music that sounds like it was made by humans, we’re humans making music that sounds like it was created by computers.’ So The Instruction Manual wind up and let loose a robotic voice choir joined by clàrsach (Celtic harp), musical saw, some stand-up piano, acoustic guitar and concertina. The robo-voice on ‘It’s so Bright in Here’ sounds like some early version of AutoTune coupled with a badly maimed vocoder, though the stage videos from Banff, where this album was developed, suggest The Instruction Manual is a more rewarding multimedia experience than it is a standalone album.