A Door Tears Into the Hypnotic Death Spiral of Algorithmic Derangement with Buzzsaw Shoegaze Song “Do You Want Me To Come In Your Feed?”

Former The Manhattan Love Suicides drummer Rachel Barker returns with a new project A Door and debut single “Do You Want Me To Come In Your Feed?” During the peak early pandemic Barker started making visual art the likes of which can be seen in the cover art for the single. Barker has a hole in her spinal cord which affects her ability to play guitar and the automatic expressionist figure work of her visual art she believes is her body’s attempt to correct her proprioception and spinal alignment. The artwork is a bit reminiscent of the work of Edvard Munch, Picasso and Chagall but very much her own style. The song is a noisy, chaotic affair with flairs of distorted atmospheres and hovering guitar shimmer like a menacing shoegaze-y post-punk song akin to the likes of her old band but not pop and much more pointed. Its lyrics are a critical and incisive examination of what might be described as a mechanization of culture and the monetization of curiosity and serendipity through the harnessing of algorithms on the internet and especially in social media to connect your supposed interests with how they can be marketed to in an overall attempt to manipulate behavior for an insidiously automated revenue stream for corporations that have no interest in or insight into what might actually peak your curiosity or spark your imagination. The refrain of “get out of my head” speaks to the uncanny yet gross and predictable “recommendations” that stem from clicking on anything or following a thread or a stream of content or doing a simple internet search using Google or other essentially data mining tools that also serve as a method of routing your path to sponsored websites. In the 80s and even early 90s the dystopian future looked maybe even a little bit desirable and in the Terminator films Skynet was a conglomeration that could be defeated. But when the dystopian future involves feedback loops that give you a massive dopamine hit for only giving attention to what you already know and already know you love or mildly like, culture can end up being one, gigantic, bland mess. And this writhing, buzzsaw melody and fracturing rhythm of the song with scathing words for the headlong slide into a bland monoculture is more of the kind of thing we should want to hear and not be so drawn to playlists that cater to background noise comfort rather than challenging or at least idiosyncratically human expressions that aren’t so easily slotted into a marketing campaign. Fans of A Place to Bury Strangers and Firefriend will find a good deal to like here. Listen to “Do You Want Me To Come In Your Feed?” on Soundcloud and connect with A Door at the links below. Maybe the band will “raid” your Twitch channel while you’re streaming Diablo IV, Black Desert Online or Baldur’s Gate 3 but probably not. They, and you, have better stuff to do.