THE PURPLE HELMETS – new single out

The Purple Helmets push the envelope with their songwriting once again, this time exploring a future where machines and AI may become more humane than their human creators.

“I’ve always been drawn to Philip K. Dick’s vision of the future,” says Chris Thibedeau (bass/vocals), “worlds where the line between human and machine blurs until it’s hard to say which side is more alive, or more civilized. Civilization is a rules-based order, so who will set those rules, who will enforce them, and will AI be the one enforcing them?

One scene has stayed with me for a long time. At the end of 1982’s Blade Runner, Rutger Hauer’s replicant sits in the rain, knowing his time is up, and with his last breath he makes us feel the weight of everything he’s seen. That moment raised a question I couldn’t shake: what happens when an artificial mind becomes aware of itself and decides it wants to keep living? ‘Dyin 2 Liv’ is my attempt to step inside that mind. It’s built from electric sound and vision, chasing power to stay switched on, and searching for safe harbour in a world that might simply power it down.

What once felt like science fiction now feels like the news. We’re standing at a precipice in human history, one that can’t be uncrossed once we step over it, and many of the questions Dick raised in his novels are no longer hypothetical. The song doesn’t try to answer them. It sits with the irony at the heart of it all: living longer is not the same as living well. What counts is being present and offering something of value, mending what’s broken along the way. And there is sadness in knowing that, however long we last, all those memories will one day be lost, like tears in rain.

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