Salaryman formed in 01996 when Rick Valentin (RNV), Rose Marshack (RGM), Jim Valentin (JEV) and Howie Kantoff (HDK) of indie rock stalwarts Poster Children traded in their guitars for synthesizers and began crafting a unique blend of instrumental electronic rock that owes as much to Booker T. and the M.G.’s as it does to Kraftwerk.

Riding the 90s post-rock wave, Salaryman released two albums (Salaryman and Karoshi) on the acclaimed German label City Slang, and toured extensively throughout Europe with artists as diverse as Tortoise, Mouse on Mars, Superchunk, and Les Thugs, knocking out a coveted Peel Session along the way.

After releasing their third album The Electric Forest in 02006, the band went into extended cryosleep, only recently re-emerging to once again provide a soundtrack for our increasingly artificial reality.

Salaryman’s new record, A Hard Drive’s Gonna Fail, was conceived as all their music has been, through extended, recorded improvisations edited down into cohesive snapshots à la Can, albeit in a Normal, Illinois basement rather than a North Rhine-Westphalia castle.

The music fuses the obsolete with the emergent, embracing the friction between technological optimism and late-stage capitalist decline. Acknowledging society’s worship of innovation, efficiency and acquisition hurtling us toward collapse, the band’s message remains defiantly optimistic, a warning and a celebration: Yes, A Hard Drive’s Gonna Fail, yet somehow, everything’s going to be all right.