Sonarpilot – ‘Cathedral’ And ‘The Last Machine’

We’ve been writing about Sonarpilot for a while now, the artist whose real name is Michael Moppert. With The Mirage Project, which he started in Spring 2020, he’s crafted six fractal films, using bespoke soundtracks, designed to appear monthly. Crazy to think that December is just around the corner, and with it comes the final two instalments, ‘Cathedral’, and ‘The Last Machine’.

‘Cathedral’ was released just a few weeks ago, and is the second to last instalment in the series. It lives up to the same promise as describe by Indie Pulse, who, when writing about previous releases, ‘CodeX’, and ‘Imperium’, that Sonarpilot is “an artist who can be counted on for a spellbinding listen”. With warm synths that longingly drone, layered one upon the other, Sonarpilot builds a world which reaches to the skies. The clip mirrors this sound, as the forms stretch heaven-ward, only to slowly disintegrate when the reach what looks like our own atmosphere. Speaking of the clip, Sonarpilot says,

“This mirage is about nature and technology. Today, technology is becoming more and more our religion, the promise in which we put our faith. And it’s true, technology has changed our lives fundamentally and will continue to do so. But in the end, nature will still be more magnificent and enigmatic than anything we will ever be able to create.”

Watch the video for ‘Cathedral’ below:

Sonarpilot leaves us with his final film in the series which was hailed by Medium as being on a par “with Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey merged with Ridley Scott’s Prometheus”. Spirals of architecture which appear to have been designed by insects rise against a desert sky on some far away planet. Forms which cannot have been designed by our current human technology move across the screen, with sentences outlying a future which seems so far away but could yet, terrifyingly, possibly be our own.

Sonically, the propulsive beat lulls us into a false sense of security, while a 90s style modem sound reminds us that what we have now was once the future. It’s at once creepy and mesmerising.

The electro music ends on this sombre note:

“Artificial Intelligence is unstoppable. Silently it invades all parts of our technological society. It might take another twenty, 50, or 200 years – but ultimately, machines will be better cooks and nurses, carpenters and scientists than humans. And in the end, when better machines will build even better machines, we might no longer be needed…”

Watch the video for ‘The Last Machine’ below.

You can find out about Sonarpilot and his extraordinary project online on his official website.