Prescience in art exists on a spectrum. At its richest, it can say something about where broader culture is headed far beyond the sound of a genre.
8485 was operating at that level when she released plague town, her debut EP, in 2021. Its five songs outlined a post-hyperpop arena for underground pop music — the roughshod, extremely online aesthetic was rejected in favor of a lovingly tailored genre collage.
But she put an equal amount of care into the tape’s surrounding lore, which involved an AI installed inside of a young singer-songwriter by the collective Helix Tears for purposes unknown.
Just two years later, this vision is not far from reality: pop stars are being duplicated, writers are striking out of fear of robot replacement, and one of AI’s godfathers is ringing the existential alarm bells.
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