Show #2603: Saturday 20th July 2024 - AI in Music / Johanna Warren / Young Marble Giants / SZWÉ
Adam Walton, BBC Radio Wales, 20th July 2024: AI in music; interview with Johanna Warren / Behind The Track: Young Marble Giants 'N.I.T.A'; The Long Song: SZWÉ 'Cautious'
This week's programme details are below.
Reading back through these pieces as I do when I have severe insomnia, I've promised a few Substacks that have never materialised, full-scale verbal meanderings on The Alarm and Samana, for example. These pieces are written, but by hand in a notebook (this month's notebook is migraine yellow, hard to leave anywhere, even on purpose). Typing them up is what has defeated me. It's busy work prevaricating as hard as I do.
I've been thinking a lot about what separates the great from the good. Mostly this has been overwhelming my Pentium I brain - 8Mb of overwrought glacial RAM - as I try to come to terms with Johanna Warren's current albums, The Rockfield Sessions Volumes I & II.
Johanna is my special guest this week. She's a generational songwriting talent, to my mind. She's our Joni, a chromosomally-flipped Elliott Smith, Phoebe Bridgers on folk fertilizer, a battle-scarred, (more) off-grid Laura Marling.
These aren't particularly accurate reference points, just names thrown in your direction to persuade you in if you haven't already listened to Johanna's music.
There's instinct, poetry, intellect, craft and musicianship all operating at a maximal level in her work.
We'll explore more of these facets of Johanna's music in an imminent piece about these albums. That piece will happen. Definitely. I think.
For the time being, Johanna talks about the albums herself and a ton of other fascinating stuff for the last third of this week's show. It's a must-listen.
The countless hours of life, application, inspiration, love, heartbreak, chaos, calm, despair, hope and vision that have gone into Johanna's songs have pushed me down a different rabbit hole for this week's Substack, though. One that's been increasingly bothering me.
Johanna's work is un-AI'able, as things stand. There's too much dirt under the fingernails for algorithms and crawling digital synpases to create a Johanna facsimile with any degree of soul or conviction. But who knows what's around the corner?
I've no idea what Johanna's feelings are about AI. She's an artist. I imagine she sees possibilities where I feel resentment and paranoia. My intention isn't to make her a poster girl for 'Real Music', both of those notions are terribly outdated. However being immersed and awed by these two albums, especially, over recent weeks has had me thinking about AI and the effect it's likely to have on music-makers. Amazing as technology undoubtedly is - as a tool for imagining, creating and capturing music - the threat of something that might could possibly shortcut much of the evolution and hardwork, the living shit, out of the equation, terrifies the hair off me.
I'm not a Luddite. I taught myself 6502 Assembly Code when I was 11 and dug deep into the cryptic algorithm programming of the school's DX27 synth. I've learnt Perl, C++. Java, PHP, Unix terminal commands; soldered primitive circuits in school; and I was the first kid in Nannerch to have a Tamagotchi.
Smiley face.
I love headspinning effects pedals, the opportunities afforded by DAW's - GarageBand, Logic, Pro Tools, Ableton. Technology has intrigued and enabled me since I took apart my dad's prized telescope to see how it worked when I was 7, learning the absolute necessity of remembering how to put things back together again. And that it's hard to sit down with smarting bum cheeks.
I don't ever want to be marooned by progress. I don't ever want to be, but I fear it's inevitable.
AI is a fascinating subject. Its capacity for good, the possibilities that are there for it to help musicians and producers are exciting. But I can feel an innate, existential fear screaming away inside me that I can't quiet by reminding myself how previous epochal developments in music technology have also unsettled conservative minds. From the barrel piano through to the Mellotron and the early Moog synthesisers, generations of 'traditional' musicians have felt that advances in technology sounded a death knell for their skillset.
Samplers - especially - caused paroxysms of anxiety and territorialism in certain quarters, especially amongst those responsible - as they saw it - for protecting composer's rights (copyright)... in reality protecting a status quo where the industry could continue to exploit their 'ownership' of the music made by people tied to their contracts.
The creative deployment of a sample can signal a spark of genius as much as the original track. Examples are legion from The Sugarhill Gang right through to Ariane Grande. Human imagination, curiosity and soul are still very much at the heart of sample-based productions and compositions... a sense that a human creative conscience is directing proceedings and making all of the key choices.
All of these evolutionary technological leaps forward - and more besides - have made learning, making and releasing music more accessible to people. This is a marvellous thing and it's what has fuelled my show over the last 20 years, or so.
Some of the current modes of AI deployment - lyric writing using ChatGPT; utilising other AI interfaces to compose melodies or chord sequences; arrangements that can be generated according to selecting and refining paramaters - necessitate a much more profound and disarming question: just how much humanity - if any - do we need behind our music?
Even now, in mid 2024, listening through the music submitted via the BBC Introducing Uploader, I can hear things that have been at least partially composed, enhanced and embellished by AI. How do I know? Well, often the artists responsible have been open about it, proud that they've harnessed this technology and that it's enabled them to make music that they’re happy to release.
My first nascent understanding of the exciting realms that AI could open up for musical artists came via Brian Eno and the apps (Bloom etc.) he co-created for the early iPhones. And I imagine that a polymathic genius like Eno has learnt that the best option here as an artist is to take advantage of all and any new vistas opened up by this technology. Art would stagnate if it didn't bend new technologies to our creative will.
But now - or very soon - AI will be writing / composing and creating music that might be indistinguishable from the music you or I make. Well it will be distinguishable from mine because it will probably, empirically be 'better' by some popular criteria (shininess, slickness, hookiness)… worse - much worse - by others (organic grain, integrity of expression, originality).
But who am I to talk? As soon as I discovered AI programmes that could design decent artwork for me and my various endeavours, I didn't hesitate to use them instead of paying for a graphic designer. It was exciting. MAP WALES SPEAKERS NEW MUSIC MODERN was all I had to type into Fotor to create this:
As soon as I started to understand some of the ramifications, I stopped using Fotor to do my artwork. The last thing I want - now - is something conjured by algorithms. I want human sweat and human tears and human fingerprints all over whatever it is that represents me and this programme. It’s a personal preference. We’re all free to make decisions as to how we best use - or don’t use - this technology, of course.
When Kraftwerk envisioned music made by robots... beautiful, brutalist, futuristic music... they did it as an entirely human fantasy, vision and construct. 'Tour De France' might have been woven from influences that Schneider and Hütter had picked up through their lives, but it wasn't scrobbled without credit: algorithms sacking imagination from the digital human infinity of the cloud, a fractal Frankenstein of multiple souls and imaginations… individual, disparate hopes, loves, broken hearts, all glued together by numbers that reduce the complexity of human existence to equations, probability and patterns.
I mean, how dare they?
If you've seen The Thing, AI does to mankind's creativity what the alien does to its victims' DNA.
[image generated by Fotor]
The tech billionaires in charge of the rails our lives increasingly ride on have already demonstrated that they don't understand or value artistic creativity. Artists are something to be reduced, assimilated. These mathematical reductionists are the kind of people who will tell you there are only 12 notes, and will impress you with exactly how many different combinations of notes are possible before all potential is exhausted, with a smug smile and the wave of a metaphoric scientific calculator. Love isn't anything more than a biochemical trick. There are only 6 different stories. We're all dreaming the same dreams, feeling the same feelings, singing the same songs ad infinitum.
The fact that they don't get it is precisely why they shouldn't get to fuck with it.
The idea of a plug-in, a magical box of an algorithm, that can make me more Elliott Smith, or Boards of Canada or Kelly Lee Owens, is attractive. Why go to the bother and pain of living and learning, breaking and reinventing the wheel, to arrive at a point of view - a poetry of my own - worth expressing, when a check box will give me a shortcut to genius?
Well, exhibit A for the defence - in my case - is Johanna Warren.
I can imagine her looking round at me, shrugging her shoulders, and saying: “don’t put me on this hill to take bullets for your argument”, and she is - of course - right.
So instead I’ll put an AI construct of Johanna up on a virtual hill to take pixel bullets for this argument instead,
From my professional perspective, as someone who has 300-500 pieces of music to listen to / appraise / whittle down to 40-ish tracks for any given show, I don’t want to be duped, don’t want to shine a light on music that’s taken seconds to create at the expense of music that’s taken a lifetime to ferment. All of this sanctimony, fully aware that some of my favourite pop music of all time took minutes to dream into being, mere hours to record.
This isn’t an argument for ‘real music’ or for muso integrity, then, really it isn’t.
I want humans at the core of what I'm experiencing. And not just the core, but the mantle, the crust and the surface too.
And if that makes me a Luddite, then so be it: hand me a six string Spinning Jenny and leave me be in my cave of real yesterdays and tomorrows.
Adam Walton, BBC Radio Wales Sat, 20th July 2024: BBC Sounds link / playlist / Stats
You can hear this week’s celebration of new Welsh music now here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m00217bk
Please subscribe to the programme via the BBC Sounds app, and then the programme will automatically download so that you can listen at your convenience, wherever you like (via Smartphone / portable devices etc):
And if you have a chance, you can check out other recent editions of the programme:
13.07.24 Jack Jones from Trampolene goes Behind The Track with 'Beautiful Pain'; The Long Song comes courtesy of Midasuno; Reem Muhammed selects Figo: https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m00212fz
06.07.24 Georgia Ruth shares the fossil record for 'Cool Head'; Sion Sebon from Yr Anhrefn foes Behind The Track with 'Rhedeg i Paris'; The Long Song comes courtesy of Rona Mac & Dan Bettridge: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0020v0l
29.06.24 Johanna Warren announcement & exclusive; Tony Bourge from Budgie goes Behind The Track with 'Parents'; The Long Song goes to Yellow Belly: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0020md0
22.06.24 Dactyl Terra talk about their debut album 'Fee Fi Fo Fum'; Ritzy and Rhydian from The Joy Formidable go Behind The Track with 'The Greatest Light is the Greatest Shade'; Hialayas are recipients of The Long Song: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0020f8z
More information about BBC Sounds here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds
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THIS WEEK’S PLAYLIST
Mali Hâf - 'Esgusodion'
Cardiff / Merthyr Tydfil
http://instagram.com/malihahahaf
Lacross Club - 'kift [radio edit]'
Pembrokeshire
http://instagram.com/tenbylacrossclub
MR - 'Rhag dy gywilydd di'
Cardiff / Llanrwst
Airflo - 'With Me All The Time'
Carmarthenshire / Cardiff / Newport
http://facebook.com/airfloband
izzo wizzard - 'scarlett (i miss you)'
Newport
http://www.instagram.com/izzowizzard
Overmono - 'Gem Lingo (ovr now) feat. Ruthven'
Monmouthshire
http://overmono.bandcamp.com
Rio 18 - 'Esa Tristeza ft. Nina Miranda & Little Barrie'
Benllech / Cardiff
DJ Alkemy - 'Break My heart ft. Greg Blackman'
Newport
http://djalkemy.bandcamp.com
Morgan Elwy - 'Gobaith Ffydd a Nerth ft. Pen Dub & Eban Elwy'
Denbigh
http://www.morganelwy.com
Wafa Arman - 'Senseless'
Cardiff
http://instagram.com/themusicalpsychologist
Alkali - 'You're Not There'
Cardiff
http://linktr.ee/Alkalimusic
Nigel - 'Fly.36'
Cardiff
Red Telephone - 'Delay the New Day'
Cardiff
Yellow Belly - 'Luna Sea'
Cardiff
http://facebook.com/YellowBellyMus
The Allergies - 'No Flash ft. Ohmega Watts'
Bristol / Cardiff
THE LONG SONG
SZWÉ - 'Cautious ft. JayaHadADream'
Cwmbran / Carmarthen
Joy Formidable, The - 'No Matter What'
Mold
http://thejoyformidable.com
Taran [2024] - 'Yr Un'
Cardiff
http://instagram.com/taran.band/
Stuart Moxham - 'Immaculate Mistake'
Cardiff
BEHIND THE TRACK #021: Young Marble Giants ‘N.I.T.A.’
Young Marble Giants - 'N.I.T.A'
Cardiff
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Young_Marble_Giants
Man At Q And M - 'The Leather Apron'
Llanrwst
http://www.manatqandm.com/
Pastel - 'Deeper Than Holy (RADIO EDIT)'
Swansea
http://facebook.com/officialpastelband/
HARD DRIVE DEEP DIVE
Solutions - 'To Die A Pioneer (Adam Walton Session 2009)'
Cardiff
Holy Gloam - 'Patterns bridging nothing in particular'
North Wales / Chester
http://facebook.com/holygloam
We Are Muffy - '20th Century Folk Hymnal'
Newport Label
http://www.countrymile.org
JOHANNA WARREN INTERVIEW
Johanna Warren - 'Rose Potion'
Hay On Wye, Powys
http://johannawarren.bandcamp.com
Johanna Warren - 'Found I Lost'
Johanna Warren - 'Your Glow'
Johanna Warren - 'Oaths (version)'
Johanna Warren - 'Maya'
Wrenna - 'These Nights'
Caerphilly
http://wrennamusic.com
Celt - 'Milwyr Ola Maes y Gad'
Bethesda
http://celt2002.tripod.com
Rob Kittridge - 'Don't Ever Let Me Go'
Newport
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SHOW STATS
986 diff songs/ 1097 Total. 626 Artists in 29 shows since 1st, Jan '24 (~Songs per:38, Unique artists per:22) Welsh:98% Cymraeg:11% (feat. lyrics in Welsh); Source: Uploader:39%, Direct:17%, Bought:18%, Plugger:21%, Commission:4%
Comprehensive Session / Interview List: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1w-rIPj0l0QhUcbEm08PUPLUWh-416mwlteG_8wpNWtQ/edit?usp=sharing
Subscribe to my Substack: https://adamwalton.substack.com
Diolch o galon,
Adam Walton