Artifice is Carmine Rebellion's first full-length album. It is a dystopian science fiction concept album, telling a story about how AI, automation, and capitalism will combine to destroy society. It wasn’t supposed to come true quite as quickly as it has.
Conceived several years earlier, I actually abandoned work on the original version of Artifice when I started work on the first Carmine Rebellion EP, Manifesto. Having cleaned my palette somewhat with seven EP, I found myself better able to work out the kinks, replace the material that was just never going to work, and turn it into something I actually like.
It was originally serialised, with one track released every two weeks over a period of about 12 months. I was still working on the album during this time, having released the first track with about five or six more finished. Afterwards, I gave the whole thing a bit more of a polish to get it ready for this complete album release.