“We and the Machines” is our first taste of Murphy Jax‘s upcoming full-lengh, Teleport: Echo City, which is due out via Chiwax on September 4. The last time we heard from Murphy Jax, he had remixed Headman’s “Be Loved,” grounding it into a dancier, more-classic Chicago house structure. With Teleport: Echo City, Murphy Jax asks us to “imagine a pre-apocalyptic generation of robots on a planet of machines” while he applies house sounds and acid workouts to his sci-fi concept of war and chaos. The conceptual influence only skirts the surface of “We and the Machines,” which stays at a walking pace for most of its five minutes. Once the four-on-the-floor kick pattern finishes, Murphy Jax’s synths and claps have all slowly worked their way into a collective strut, never quite ramping up into a full-blown dance number.

We and the Machines