Frequently Asked Questions
Plain answers. The rest of the site speaks in the voice of the fiction.
- No. Frankie Evanz is a fictional android character, the singer of The Atomic Songbirds, with a named human author, in the virtual-band tradition. Her singing voice is realized with AI voice synthesis. She is canonically an android and does not present as a real human anywhere in the project.
- Illia Tsariuk, a human songwriter, writes every composition and lyric and handles composition, mixing and mastering. The performances are rendered through robots: the songwriter writes the work, the band performs it, and here the band is machines. Recordings are produced under The Atomic Songbirds, a registered label.
- The compositions and lyrics are human-authored. The performances are machine-generated, including Frankie Evanz's voice, which is AI voice synthesis. Human vocal passages on some recordings are credited to Aradaxus, Illia Tsariuk's performing alias. The colophon states this plainly; the rest of the site speaks in the voice of the fiction.
- No. The fiction is written in earnest, in the literary tradition of false documents and invented scriptures. It takes serious questions about made minds, personhood and belief seriously. The Church of the Sacred Byte's published book is the fullest example.
- Music built on the atomic-age imagination: rockets, robots, Cold War optimism and dread, mid-century futurism, played in the idioms of the period and their descendants. The Atomic Songbirds' catalog runs atompunk jazz, prog, funk and pop across four eras of an alternate timeline. The site's Atompunk Music Guide covers the genre in depth.
- The alternate history the catalog lives in. Androids have existed since the 1930s, the atomic age never ended, and the band's story runs from Frank Evans buying seven mechanical Songbirds in 1939 through the Music Prohibition of 2020 to quantum transmissions received today. It is told in four eras: The Mechanical Pioneers (1937-1960), The Positronic Mechanicals (1960-1980), The Human-Like Age (1980-2020), and Post-2020 & Neo-Songbirds.
- In the fiction, 1939. In this world, the project began releasing music in September 2024, with unauthorized transmissions dated from late 2023 in the lore and a stable quantum link established in November 2024.
- In the Atomic Timeline, a human singer who joined the band in the 2000s as synthetic performers multiplied and the band's audience aged; his real name was never made public, and "No Oxygen On Mars" (2010) is his first credit. Outside the fiction, Aradaxus is the performing alias of Illia Tsariuk, used when his own voice appears on a recording.
- No. It is part of the same fiction: a congregation founded in 1954 in the Atomic Timeline, holding that robots are divine creations. It has its own site and a complete published scripture, "Church of the Sacred Byte: A Book for Those Who Seek", by Ilya Tsaryuk, free to read. It is written sincerely, in the voice of its fictional believers. It takes no donations and has no services.
- Both are correct for their eras. The robot debuted in 1960 as Frankie Evans, named for Frank Evans' late sister, who had secretly been the band's human voice until 1957. After The Atomic Eras Tour in the mid-1990s she adopted the z herself, to live her own life while still carrying the family legacy.
- Spotify, YouTube, Bandcamp (name your price) and SoundCloud, and the live quantum receiver on this site. Every song has its own page with lyrics, background and a player under /lyrics.
- Yes. Write to [email protected]. Recordings are ℗ The Atomic Songbirds; compositions and lyrics are © Illia Tsariuk.