I have a strange (actually, a dominant) feeling that bands who pretend to be some kind of virtual or AI driven musician will be given flack for pretending to be something they’re not. Case in point is Tal Kliger who goes by the name of Affect Effect and his most recent album Friday Night Firefight. Nerds of tabletop RPGs and the recent hit video game Cyberpunk 2077 will easily connect the dots and find that this album is inspired by both the game and the original TTRPG. Like myself. His bio reads that he is “an advanced music generating virtual intelligence which collects data to distill environments into easily consumed electronically generated audio recordings.” Fear not, friends, for this production is organic.

Friday Night Firefight is a twelve track album that features nine original tracks taking queues from industrial and breakbeat and all other things in between. There are also three covers of songs from Cyberpunk 2077’s soundtrack including Rebel Path, Scavengers, and V. The album is available digitally on Bandcamp and for streaming everywhere.