Trueclaw and their new single, “One Road,” arrive with a curious proposition: an anthem for human perseverance co-authored by artificial intelligence. There’s an immediate, propulsive energy here, the steady cadence of a long-distance run translated into pulsing synths and an ever-evolving beat. It is a song that doesn’t shout encouragement from the sidelines; it becomes the rhythmic breath in your lungs, the metronome for putting one foot in front of the other.
The peculiar detail here is the song’s parentage. This is a collaboration between a human heart in Uppsala, Sweden, and the binary logic of tools like SUNO AI. Hearing this, a thought flickered past—it reminds me, strangely, of the old chemical baths for developing Ektachrome slides. There’s a rigid, scientific process at play that somehow, almost alchemically, conjures pure, vivid emotion out of inanimate materials. The track builds with that same sense of controlled magic, its structure unfurling with the cinematic scope of a grand video game score, all components climbing over one another towards a victorious crescendo.
Trueclaw has managed to imbue this track with a genuine sense of striving. It’s a clean, polished piece of electronic pop built to push you forward, crafted entirely within the confines of a home studio. It accomplishes its goal with an almost startling efficiency.
But the creation itself leaves a bigger question hanging in the air. When the code for inspiration is written by a ghost in the machine, does that make the resulting human fire burn any less brightly?
