Meet Computer: Six Minds, One Machine

Still processing their debut album, Vancouver’s latest art-rock unit proves collaboration is the new rebellion.

Published on November 3, 2025

by John Divney

Photos by Zachary Vague | Photo Illustrations by Taylor Priede

Vancouver’s Wise Hall is dimly lit and heavy with smoke-machine haze when local act Computer take the stage to kick off the second night of Psychgeist. Five seconds after singer Ben Lock introduces the band, they’re already four seconds into their first song—locked in and thrashing like a group days away from releasing their debut album and heading overseas for the first time. The six musicians on stage move as one wiry, kinetic unit, each part of a larger machine fine-tuned by months of studio sessions, rehearsals, and the kind of obsessive focus that turns noise into something divine.

That debut, Station on the Hill, is out now through Canadian indie powerhouse Dine Alone Records—a milestone for one of Vancouver’s most exciting new bands. Their upcoming two-week UK and European tour will culminate at Rotterdam’s Left of the Dial Festival, a fitting step up for a project that has grown from basement experiment to one of the city’s most compelling indie music exports.

“We thought we were going to put it out independently,” Lock tells RANGE, sitting down for an interview with the entire band after their set. “We didn’t really know it was an option. And then to find out it was an option…” The connection with Dine Alone happened in the most modern way possible. “It was through someone from Dine Alone following us on Instagram,” he says. “I love Metz and all the other bands that are on Dine Alone. I reached out and we started chatting, then we went out and met them in Toronto and it was a really natural kind of thing. They are really cool.”

Soon after, another email arrived—this one from the Netherlands. “We got reached out to by this amazing festival,” Lock recalls. “We had just done a small Canadian tour and a small run to Calgary and Edmonton for Sled Island. We got an email saying that we could do this festival, and we were kind of like, ‘Well, I guess we should book a tour—that sounds really fun.’” With a few calls, some label help, and a few contacts from their friends in Piss (“Shout out Piss…the best band ever,” says drummer Ricky Sanderson), Computer suddenly found themselves going international.

They had built the momentum themselves. Most of Station on the Hill was recorded at Green Auto Studios, a newly constructed space that became their makeshift lab. “It was sort of in the process of being built so the clientele wasn’t there yet and we had the room,” says Lock. “We couldn’t afford to go to a (different) studio and do that whole thing with our first record, so it was cool to have the opportunity to really get experimental in the (Green Auto) studio and have the time.” Sanderson jumps in to agree: “Oh my God, yeah. The time was an insane luxury.”

That freedom shaped the sound of the album—a raw, unrelenting debut that pairs industrial-strength percussion with moments of surprising tenderness. The drums hit with blunt precision, guitars and synths surge in waves, and Lock’s vocals pivot between haunted whispers and full-throated screams. Songs like “I’ll Follow” and “The Bells” stretch from fragile beginnings into sonic avalanches, proof that chaos and beauty can coexist in the same breath.

Behind the boards is Hudson Schelesny, a not-so-subtle silent member who co-founded the band and handled production and mixing. “Hudson is our producer. He’s the seventh member of the band,” says Lock. “He’s our guy in the chair. He does all the mixing and all the production on everything.”

Computer began as a recording project between Lock and Schelesny, two friends who had been making music together since they were 16. “We just kind of started making demos one day, just trying new stuff,” Lock says. “A lot of those ideas started sounding like something we’d never made, and stuff we wanted to make. Songs like ‘Concrete Vehicles’ and ‘Dissolution Youth’ came out of those sessions.” When those early tracks started to feel like a band rather than a bedroom project, they recruited more friends—Keenan Olsen, Charlie Howell, Jackson Bell, Jacob Pepin, and Sanderson—and Computer became a living organism.

Album opener “Now in a Vacuum” captures the rush of that transformation. Syncopated drums and slinking bass drive Ben’s anxious, breathless vocals toward an explosion of noise that feels both claustrophobic and cathartic. “I knew there needed to be a first song,” he says. “I tried writing so many riffs (but) when I was thinking about it, I couldn’t do it.” Sanderson remembers how it all came together: “When I heard that bass line, I was easily able to put the drums down and then everything sort of fell into place.” Lock laughs at the memory. “It’s stayed in that original state. All the songs took a long time, and then ‘Now in a Vacuum’ came and then it was, like, ‘okay, this shit is done.’”

The same scrappy DIY ethos runs through everything they do. When they’re not on stage or in the studio, each member contributes to the visual side of the band—designing posters, shooting videos, handling social media, or crafting the artwork. “There’s six of us, we make a good team,” says Lock. “We’re able to split work pretty efficiently between all of us, which is nice.” Howell adds, “There’s quite a few of us who work with visuals or video and that kind of thing. It’s definitely a luxury having this many people around.”

That collective creativity has become a cornerstone of the group’s identity. “You have to have a visual that really matches your record,” says Howell. “For me personally, sometimes I can be put off if an album cover doesn’t resonate with me, even if I love the music.”

After a year of recording, planning, and playing, the band is ready to see how far this project can travel. The band just returned from Europe, and there may be a short trip to Montreal, but otherwise, Lock admits they’re due for a breather. “It’s been a pretty hefty year,” he says. “We’re super stoked about playing. Playing music in this band is so fun. There’s so many different types of songs in the set. We never run out of things to try.”

There are already more songs waiting in the wings—at least four that didn’t make it onto the album. But for now, Computer are exactly where they need to be: six artists running the same program, powered by friendship, feedback, and the thrill of making noise together.