Frankie Evanz
Positronic vocalist of The Atomic Songbirds, unveiled in Berlin in 1960
Frankie Evanz is the android who sings for The Atomic Songbirds. Frank Evans unveiled her at Berlin's Konzerthaus in 1960 as Frankie Evans, a sleek robot vocalist powered by a Russian-designed helion core and carrying a newly developed positronic brain, capable of singing, learning, adapting, and perhaps feeling. She bears the name of Frank's late sister, whose voice had secretly been the band's since 1939. In the weeks after the debut, Frank, dying of atomic fever, transferred his memories, thoughts and musical sensibilities into her positronic core so that his sister's voice and personality and his own artistry would outlive him.
When Frank died in December 1960, his will left his entire estate to her: his wealth, his copyrights, the rights to his work. A robot now held the keys to his legacy, and the world argued for years about whether a machine could inherit. She led the band regardless. Two years later she recorded Rapture, an album of English poetry, and from 1963 the band held a residency at the Stardust Lounge on Luna Base Alpha, where "Tick-Tock Girl" premiered in 1965. She performed in the caverns of Mars Colony from 1972, headlined the Solar Sway Festival across three worlds in 1986, and toured the solar system in the mid-1990s on The Atomic Eras Tour.
After that tour she announced she would henceforth be known as Frankie Evanz. The z was her own act: a way to stop being a copy of the woman she was named for and live her own life while still carrying the family legacy. She has never stopped calling her helion core "atomic", though everyone else calls it helion. It is her tether to the man who built her.
In the 2000s, as synthetic performers filled every stage and the band's audience aged, she brought a human singer, Aradaxus, into the band; their first recording together was "No Oxygen On Mars" in 2010. In 2020 the Music Prohibition banned the band's harmonies for interfering with NanoVita nanobots, and by 2021 she had vanished from public life. Her music broke through during the Positronic Workers' Uprising of 2024, and her solo release "Tax the Rich" belongs to that year. She has not been seen since. Her recordings reach this timeline through quantum receivers.
Outside the fiction
Frankie Evanz is a fictional android character with a named human author, in the virtual-band tradition. Her singing voice is realized with AI voice synthesis. All compositions and lyrics are written by Illia Tsariuk; the performances are rendered through robots, which is the point rather than a shortcut. Canonically an android, she does not present as a real human on the record or off it.
Full authorship statement on the colophon.
Questions
- Is Frankie Evanz a real person?
- No. Frankie Evanz is a fictional android character, the singer of The Atomic Songbirds, with a named human author. Her voice is realized with AI voice synthesis, in the virtual-band tradition. She does not present as a real human anywhere in the project.
- Why is it Frankie Evans in the 1960s and Frankie Evanz later?
- The robot debuted in 1960 as Frankie Evans, bearing the name of Frank Evans' late sister. After The Atomic Eras Tour in the mid-1990s she adopted the z herself, to stop being a copy of the dead woman and live her own life while still carrying the family legacy. Both spellings are correct for their eras.
- Who built Frankie Evanz?
- Frank Evans, the band's founder and songwriter, with a clandestine team of American, German and Russian engineers. She was unveiled in Berlin in 1960, months before Frank's death, and inherited his entire estate.