The Future of Music – Japan’s New Robot Rock Band

They are called Z Machinese and they are about to take the Japanese music world by storm. This unique rock band is made up entirely of futuristic automatons able to play guitar, drums and keyboards better than any human.

Z Machines is the brainchild of Yoichiro Kawaguchi, an IT professor at the University of Tokyo, and mechanical designer Naofumi Yonetsuka, who wanted to liven up the music scene by creating something futuristic and exciting. So they created Ashura, a six-armed drummer who can actually play 22 drums simultaneously and sounds like four people playing the drums at the same time, Mach, a metal-and-wire guitarist who uses 78 fingers and 12 picks allowing him to challenge even the most gifted human guitar players, and Cosmo, who is literally wired into his keyboard and shoots lasers from his eyes. Z Mazhines certainly sounds like a very impressive band, but can they really play a gig? They answered that question on Monday, when they teamed up with Japanese human duo Amoyamo, for an electrifying performance at one of Tokyo’s most popular night clubs.

Z-Machines-robots

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Robot Band Compressorhead Puts the “Metal” in Heavy Metal

Compressorhead is not your usual heavy-metal rock group. The band’s three members are all robots, but they’ve proven they can cover hits by rock legends like Motorhead or AC/DC honorably. They’re even scheduled to play alongside The Chili Peppers and The Killers, at the Big Day Out Festival, in Australia, this summer.

Assembling, cooking, waiting tables, even horse riding; robots have proven capable of doing all of these jobs, but until now, musicians seemed like they had nothing to fear. Well, not anymore – introducing Compressorhead, a rock band made up of three real metal heads: Fingers, Bones and Stickboy. They are robots that can be programmed to cover hits by pretty much any rock group that ever existed, but so far they seem to prefer heavyweights like Black Sabbath, Pantera or Led Zeppelin. They’re a bit lacking in the creative department, but I’m sure they’ll improve on that as they go along. The robot group hail from Germany and hope to conquer human kind with their music, instead of Terminator-like force. Let’s meet the boys:

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