To show or not to show?That is the question. For artists, this has always been the question, but in recent times, this decision has grown to necessitate a translation through the cultural blender of social media. This tightrope across the algorithmic abyss, and the double-edged sword felt by the need to participate, is the core concept behind Somatoast’s new album, PLEASE INTERACT WITH MY CONTENT, a seven-track landmine that is both “a satirical commentary” and “a raw display of vulnerability.”
While this has always been the fork in the road for every practicing artist, the plight has become something of a routine struggle in the modern age, where creatives, to achieve recognition, are almost required to make a daily display of not only their art but their lives and processes, funneling the act of creation into the world through a content-driven food fight of media platforms and instant gratification. Forget Andy Warhol’s “fifteen minutes of fame”: In the 21st century, the spotlight is shifting every second.
Drew Stevens Photography
The Man Behind The Music
Somatoast is the alias of Asheville-based producer Mark Rubin, a prolific sound designer with over a decade of exploratory output and well-deserved recognition in electronic genres ranging from deep brainwash psybient and crunchy neuro to groovy bass bumpers and mind-scrambling uptempo.
Last year saw the Somatoast project celebrate its ten-year anniversary with the release of Mythology, a “seamless ambient journey” that mixed unreleased material with VIP renditions of familiar favorites, combined with headlining events and prime festival slots all around the country.
This year has already seen a number of noteworthy nights led by Rubin, from the Hypnotic Theatre (paired with the show’s curator, Tenorless, in the two artists’ home base of Asheville) and the opening slot for Tipper at Texas Eclipse Festival to an album release show (also in Asheville) and top-tier performances at events like Flow Moon, Summer Sequence, Cirque du Surreal, and more. Most recently, he headlined a River Beats SHIFT Thursdays event in Denver featuring visuals by Papa Bear and live dancing by Toh. If you’ve been lucky enough to get your soma toasted at any of these events, you’ve probably heard a track or three off this new album ahead of its release.
John Verwey Photography
PLEASE INTERACT WITH MY CONTENT: Track Analysis
In the months leading up to its official release, Somatoast dropped a few of the tracks off PLEASE INTERACT WITH MY CONTENT as singles. Today, we are able to hear the full album front to back.
For those who have been along for the journey, Rubin has also been dropping playful posts and satirical reels on social media to invoke fan interaction aligned with the album’s overarching theme–a “Soma-roast” of sorts, promoting shenanigans and self-reflection while also aiming our sights at the greater question of why we do the things we do in the world of social media, which, when taken too seriously, can often make us feel the cybersonic anguish displayed on the cover art by Mute Illustrations.
Somatoast’s IG
Opening the album, “Virtue Signal” launches with a build-up of buoyant pulses and ripples of neuro staccato. Textured IDM breaks into heaving wobbles, a volley of bass dribbles, and sharp slip-drips that make one feel locked into the blue light field of a computer screen, alone in a dark room.
The second track, “I.V. (Incessant Validation),” merges almost seamlessly with the first. True to the double entendre of its name, this track renders the intravenous drone of instant gratification, an innocently human obsession, with a sonic wash of cyber dub. After slipping into a squinch glitch of wet-robot maneuvers, the track returns to its dark dub and back, a feedback loop, an indulgent ouroboros drooling in the echo chamber of jammed “like” buttons and heart-shaped notifications.
“Cucked and Commodified” starts off with spooky reverberations, technobloops, and disorienting breaks as the bassline takes control, building a soundscape fit for Blade Runner. Wayward wiggles of Arabic melodica notes emerge like dancing cobras and seize control of the senses. Suddenly we’re in the open-air bazaar of a futuristic desert where it seems we ourselves, at no small part of our own, have unwittingly toppled from the tightrope between media and business, becoming the objects for sale.
“Broadcasting Live: Every Thought,” opens with ethereal keywork, atmospheric strains, and a pattery drumbeat before stretching into a full-swing taffy machine of glitch strips and power bass. What starts in a felt safe zone of honest expression, a sense of belonging and community, grows obsessive, destructive. Before we know what’s happened, our internal world is locked in a siphon routine between the brain and social media as the need to share and outwardly express our every thought overtakes.
On the other side of the spectrum from “I.V.,” “Your Disapproval Shatters Me” seems to represent the dread dislike, often evoked by silence. Our internal world runs amok wondering why this person or that in our online network failed to hit the “like” button on our latest post. Sonically, this track is an innovative take on future bass. There’s a kaleidoscopic fragmentation at play. Tension mounts as the mind grapples for sense, and a disheartening deconstruction of self and identity drifts to a psybient finish.
Released as a single in 2023, “Melt” opens with sultry, cradle-like rhythms. At once tribal and spacious, “Melt” has us disintegrating into virtual reality. An empowering sense of indifference begins to form. Nebulosity is charged with electricity as a cumulonimbus cloud of revelation moves in to carry us to the final track.
The album closes with “Anthem of Fun,” another single from 2023. With this track, we seem to break free of the feedback loop at last, remembering why we started to create and share our work in the first place. We re-enter a state of self-reliance and discovery, realizing these platforms are as much a place for silliness and play as they are a serious gallery for our life’s work. In the new day’s sun, the power is back in the hands of the artist, who must look in the mirror, make a funny face, laugh, and move on, content with what they’ve accomplished and shared.
Here, Now, and Everything to Come
All in all, PLEASE INTERACT WITH MY CONTENT plays like a journey set: a dark night of the soul seen through the lens of modern self-promotion. Sometimes it’s difficult to perceive these life-encompassing platforms as the tools they can be; sometimes we have to experience the pitfalls of necessity before we emerge empowered, utilizing the tools with proper understanding of their influence and power.
Somatoast crafts this journey with pure musical force, identifying with the plight that affects creators and consumers alike, all without losing his sense of humor. The technological age is a tricky beast, and it helps to know we’re all still at the entrance of the cave, learning how to light a balanced flame.
PLEASE INTERACT WITH MY CONTENT is now available for digital download on all your favorite streaming services. For those who wish to own a physical piece of the magic, the album is also available in a number of beautiful specially crafted, limited-edition vinyl forms on Somatoast’s website, along with stunning mandalic shirts designed by Perfectly Possessed to coincide with the new album.
Original Artwork by Perfectly Possessed
If you’re in the Boston metropolitan area, catch Somatoast live tonight in Cambridge, MA, for a special Halloween show with Desert Dwellers and Entangled Mind. If not, make sure to catch the mastermind rinsing these fresh tunes in Atlanta, Nashville, and Portland, over the next month. The new year is approaching fast. Follow the links below to keep up to date (and interact!) with all of Somatoast’s original content and stay on the lookout for when he’ll be in a city near you.
To show or not to show? That is the question. For artists, this has always been the question, but in recent times, this decision has grown to necessitate a translation through the cultural blender of social media. This tightrope across the algorithmic abyss, and the double-edged sword felt by the need to participate, is the core concept behind Somatoast’s new album, PLEASE INTERACT WITH MY CONTENT, a seven-track landmine that is both “a satirical commentary” and “a raw display of vulnerability.”
While this has always been the fork in the road for every practicing artist, the plight has become something of a routine struggle in the modern age, where creatives, to achieve recognition, are almost required to make a daily display of not only their art but their lives and processes, funneling the act of creation into the world through a content-driven food fight of media platforms and instant gratification. Forget Andy Warhol’s “fifteen minutes of fame”: In the 21st century, the spotlight is shifting every second.
The Man Behind The Music
Somatoast is the alias of Asheville-based producer Mark Rubin, a prolific sound designer with over a decade of exploratory output and well-deserved recognition in electronic genres ranging from deep brainwash psybient and crunchy neuro to groovy bass bumpers and mind-scrambling uptempo.
Last year saw the Somatoast project celebrate its ten-year anniversary with the release of Mythology, a “seamless ambient journey” that mixed unreleased material with VIP renditions of familiar favorites, combined with headlining events and prime festival slots all around the country.
This year has already seen a number of noteworthy nights led by Rubin, from the Hypnotic Theatre (paired with the show’s curator, Tenorless, in the two artists’ home base of Asheville) and the opening slot for Tipper at Texas Eclipse Festival to an album release show (also in Asheville) and top-tier performances at events like Flow Moon, Summer Sequence, Cirque du Surreal, and more. Most recently, he headlined a River Beats SHIFT Thursdays event in Denver featuring visuals by Papa Bear and live dancing by Toh. If you’ve been lucky enough to get your soma toasted at any of these events, you’ve probably heard a track or three off this new album ahead of its release.
PLEASE INTERACT WITH MY CONTENT: Track Analysis
In the months leading up to its official release, Somatoast dropped a few of the tracks off PLEASE INTERACT WITH MY CONTENT as singles. Today, we are able to hear the full album front to back.
For those who have been along for the journey, Rubin has also been dropping playful posts and satirical reels on social media to invoke fan interaction aligned with the album’s overarching theme–a “Soma-roast” of sorts, promoting shenanigans and self-reflection while also aiming our sights at the greater question of why we do the things we do in the world of social media, which, when taken too seriously, can often make us feel the cybersonic anguish displayed on the cover art by Mute Illustrations.
Opening the album, “Virtue Signal” launches with a build-up of buoyant pulses and ripples of neuro staccato. Textured IDM breaks into heaving wobbles, a volley of bass dribbles, and sharp slip-drips that make one feel locked into the blue light field of a computer screen, alone in a dark room.
The second track, “I.V. (Incessant Validation),” merges almost seamlessly with the first. True to the double entendre of its name, this track renders the intravenous drone of instant gratification, an innocently human obsession, with a sonic wash of cyber dub. After slipping into a squinch glitch of wet-robot maneuvers, the track returns to its dark dub and back, a feedback loop, an indulgent ouroboros drooling in the echo chamber of jammed “like” buttons and heart-shaped notifications.
“Cucked and Commodified” starts off with spooky reverberations, technobloops, and disorienting breaks as the bassline takes control, building a soundscape fit for Blade Runner. Wayward wiggles of Arabic melodica notes emerge like dancing cobras and seize control of the senses. Suddenly we’re in the open-air bazaar of a futuristic desert where it seems we ourselves, at no small part of our own, have unwittingly toppled from the tightrope between media and business, becoming the objects for sale.
“Broadcasting Live: Every Thought,” opens with ethereal keywork, atmospheric strains, and a pattery drumbeat before stretching into a full-swing taffy machine of glitch strips and power bass. What starts in a felt safe zone of honest expression, a sense of belonging and community, grows obsessive, destructive. Before we know what’s happened, our internal world is locked in a siphon routine between the brain and social media as the need to share and outwardly express our every thought overtakes.
On the other side of the spectrum from “I.V.,” “Your Disapproval Shatters Me” seems to represent the dread dislike, often evoked by silence. Our internal world runs amok wondering why this person or that in our online network failed to hit the “like” button on our latest post. Sonically, this track is an innovative take on future bass. There’s a kaleidoscopic fragmentation at play. Tension mounts as the mind grapples for sense, and a disheartening deconstruction of self and identity drifts to a psybient finish.
Released as a single in 2023, “Melt” opens with sultry, cradle-like rhythms. At once tribal and spacious, “Melt” has us disintegrating into virtual reality. An empowering sense of indifference begins to form. Nebulosity is charged with electricity as a cumulonimbus cloud of revelation moves in to carry us to the final track.
The album closes with “Anthem of Fun,” another single from 2023. With this track, we seem to break free of the feedback loop at last, remembering why we started to create and share our work in the first place. We re-enter a state of self-reliance and discovery, realizing these platforms are as much a place for silliness and play as they are a serious gallery for our life’s work. In the new day’s sun, the power is back in the hands of the artist, who must look in the mirror, make a funny face, laugh, and move on, content with what they’ve accomplished and shared.
Here, Now, and Everything to Come
All in all, PLEASE INTERACT WITH MY CONTENT plays like a journey set: a dark night of the soul seen through the lens of modern self-promotion. Sometimes it’s difficult to perceive these life-encompassing platforms as the tools they can be; sometimes we have to experience the pitfalls of necessity before we emerge empowered, utilizing the tools with proper understanding of their influence and power.
Somatoast crafts this journey with pure musical force, identifying with the plight that affects creators and consumers alike, all without losing his sense of humor. The technological age is a tricky beast, and it helps to know we’re all still at the entrance of the cave, learning how to light a balanced flame.
PLEASE INTERACT WITH MY CONTENT is now available for digital download on all your favorite streaming services. For those who wish to own a physical piece of the magic, the album is also available in a number of beautiful specially crafted, limited-edition vinyl forms on Somatoast’s website, along with stunning mandalic shirts designed by Perfectly Possessed to coincide with the new album.
If you’re in the Boston metropolitan area, catch Somatoast live tonight in Cambridge, MA, for a special Halloween show with Desert Dwellers and Entangled Mind. If not, make sure to catch the mastermind rinsing these fresh tunes in Atlanta, Nashville, and Portland, over the next month. The new year is approaching fast. Follow the links below to keep up to date (and interact!) with all of Somatoast’s original content and stay on the lookout for when he’ll be in a city near you.
Follow Somatoast:
Facebook | Instagram | SoundCloud | Website
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