In the digital age, our tolerance for discomfort has thinned. We hover in the corners at parties, staring at screens to avoid small talk; our eyes flick between notifications to dodge our own thoughts. If that’s our idea of leisure, then what counts as labor? On Station on the Hill, Vancouver noise-rock collective Computer answer: it’s nearly indistinguishable. Alienation permeates every facet of contemporary life—work, play, even quiet moments—and Computer harness that friction, amplifying it into artfully chaotic noise.
Few bands articulate the oppressive haze of modern overstimulation with such precision. On “Weird New Vocation,” vocalist Ben Lock narrates the day he starts a new job: “I got a new job today / With suits and shoes and socks / And everything paid / It’s all been leading up to this.” The work promises material stability—cars, houses, mirrors to reflect oneself—but the sum only deepens disillusionment. Lock’s mantra mutates from “I feel better about myself” to “I want to feel better” before the track erupts in a violent, tumbling outro, each instrument cascading like a staircase of smashed glass.
Computer are still young, but Station on the Hill showcases their formidable ambition and appetite for sonic experimentation. Math rock, post-punk, hardcore, and even fleeting klezmer motifs converge into a densely packed collection that leaves almost no breathing room. Quiet moments are as unnerving as the shrieking, instrument-crushing passages. “The Bells,” a brief, haunted interlude of reverberating chords and frizzled chatter, segues into “I’ll Follow,” a slow, tension-soaked track where saxophone, droning guitar, and Lock’s trembling vocals turn restraint into something darker than rage. A repeating riff grows under metallic percussion, and Lock warps follow into fall low, while Jackson Bell’s sax overtakes him. Moments like these, where Lock wrings existential dread from the simplest phrases, recur throughout the album: in “The Picture,” he mutters “I’ll say to myself” like a panicked mantra; in the glitchy, mesmerizing “Dissolution Use,” a filler-like lyric becomes an instrument of obsessive disconnection.
Seven musicians populate Station on the Hill, each contributing layers that refuse to be background. Clanging bongos and screeching strings punctuate “Now in a Vacuum,” a sludgy solo torments “Concrete Vehicles,” and the title track’s nine-and-a-half-minute drone expands like a pressure chamber. This is not music to be heard passively; it is music to inhabit, and it demands everything from the listener. “Numbing is not my intention / Life is what I choose,” Lock asserts, crystallizing the album’s thesis: overstimulation becomes a conduit for both self-determination and self-destruction, often so entangled that the two are indistinguishable.
Station on the Hill is a map of modern existential overload, an immersive, punishing, and oddly exhilarating exploration of what happens when discomfort is no longer optional but inescapable.
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