Electronica and the rise of machines in music, like machines everywhere, are moving to include, eclipse, and displace people and the human touch. iPods replace DJ's in clubs. A buddy of mine pointed out that from Broadway to Las Vegas, living musicians are being replaced by synthesizers and drum machines. Karaoke is now considered an art form and folks who pay $50 to $500 to see a "live show" see a "band" playing computer music. And if there is a live band, as in the case of, say, Beyonce's ongoing tour, the musicians interface with and are subservient to, the almighty machine in the form of click tracks, videos and other special effects.

Musicians who create in the realm of electronica or whatever one calls sampled, processed, or electronically generated music, almost always emphasize the genre's machine-like-qualities of Hans and Frans Germanic crunching juggernaut rhythms, and bloops and bleeps that resemble the conversations of robots. The composer, performer and soundscaper Polarity/1, however, creates music that has one foot firmly in electronica and the rest of the body in an organic musical universe that includes pop, folk-rock, various schools of jazz, Latin, funk and modernist music from the classical tradition. He mixes these genres into well-blended songs to create a sound that is like the Six Million Dollar Man: part man, part machine but at heart totally human.

It has been said by many that there is nothing new in music, that it's all been done before; all that is left is to adopt a past style, a past sound of music and wear it like a retro outfit from a vintage clothing store. That certainly appears to be true when almost every hyped band makes this old school music head (and a lot of new schoolers, too) think "where have I been bored by this before?" One band after the other trots out '70's hard rock, '60's folk and punk rock that's thirty years old. Some artists try to blend different styles and at least gets an A for effort. Unfortunately, such attempts usually reveal other problems like no strong musical identity and a distinct lack of observations and commentary regarding real life and the human drama. It adds up to being less of more of the same.