This robot band has a guitarist with 78 fingers

All-robot band Compressorhead has some competition. British record label Warp Records will soon be releasing an album performed entirely by a three-piece band of Japanese robots called Z-Machines — the guitarist has 78 fingers, while the drummer rocks out with 22 arms. The band’s creators teamed up with composer Squarepusher initially to simply explore creating music with the bots, but eventually they crafted an entire five track album. “In this project familiar instruments are used in ways which till now have been impossible,” Squarepusher says.

While the additional appendages mean that the band members can play in ways no human can, composing for them involved its own unique set of challenges. “Each of the robotic devices involved in the performance of this music has its own specification which permits certain possibilities and excludes others,” Squarepusher explains. “The robot guitar player, for example, can play much faster than a human ever could, but there is no amplitude control.” The aptly titled album Music For Robots is due to launch on April 8th, and if you pre-order now you’ll be able to grab the first single “Sad Robot Goes Funny” early. Now we’ll just have to wait for the inevitable Daft Punk collaboration.