Speaker 1: It was this alarm in the background going to be okay,
Speaker 1: does that mean we should get out?
Speaker 2: Sound installation happening?
Speaker 3: Do you think that's a building wide noise?
Speaker 1: No, no, one not like there's people chilling over there
Speaker 1: and they don't look concerned.
Speaker 2: I don't smell smoke.
Speaker 3: The Barbercane Center, it turns out, was not on fire,
Speaker 3: but Holly Herndon and I still got out of there.
Speaker 3: We went back to her hotel to record this episode
Speaker 3: of Midnight Chat in a very unlikely place. We sat
Speaker 3: on a little landing just by the lifts on floor
Speaker 3: three of her hotel, which meant that anyone coming up
Speaker 3: to floor three, the lift would open and they would
Speaker 3: be faced with myself and Holly sat on a small
Speaker 3: bench talking into her microphones. Quite a bizarre welcome to
Speaker 3: some people who had maybe just arrived in London for
Speaker 3: that holiday. But thank you to Holly for putting up
Speaker 3: with this kind of slap dash, unprofessional outfit that we're
Speaker 3: running here alloud them quiet. I met Holly earlier this year.
Speaker 3: We did a big cover feature with her about her
Speaker 3: new album called Proto, and there's a lot for me
Speaker 3: to tell you about that before we get started on
Speaker 3: this week's episode. Proto is Holly's third record. Holly is
Speaker 3: a experimental electronic musician who makes a lot of music
Speaker 3: using computers, but protos are particularly interesting and quite revolutionary record.
Speaker 3: It was made using AI, and we talk a bit
Speaker 3: about a baby, an AI baby that she's made. It's
Speaker 3: called Spawn. I've met Spawn in Berlin and spawns her
Speaker 3: AI baby. So the way Proto as a record, which
Speaker 3: is an experimental electronic records that's still got a lot
Speaker 3: of melody in it, I'd recommend checking it out. But
Speaker 3: the way it was made was by feeding an AI
Speaker 3: machine that she had made with her partner, her husband,
Speaker 3: Matt Dryhurst. They made this AI and they sang to
Speaker 3: this machine, and this machine kind of started to learn
Speaker 3: certain things and gave them some material to make this
Speaker 3: new record, Proto. What's interesting about this, I think is
Speaker 3: that you hear a story about musician makes AI album
Speaker 3: and the first thing you're probably thinking is I don't
Speaker 3: want that. That's not what music is. Music's not about
Speaker 3: getting it automated. But as we talk about in this podcast,
Speaker 3: it's not as simple as that. In fact, what Holly
Speaker 3: was exploring was how we can use technology to have
Speaker 3: greater human connections and interactions with other people. Technology doesn't
Speaker 3: have to be something that replaces humans. It can be
Speaker 3: something that frees us and lets us be more human.
Speaker 3: So protos are really interesting as some really interesting concepts
Speaker 3: behind that. Holly is a lovely person to talk to,
Speaker 3: as you're about to hear, she is extremely intelligent. Just
Speaker 3: passed her PhD at Stamford University. She was born in Tennessee,
Speaker 3: a in the Bible Belts. It currently lives in Berlin
Speaker 3: and spent some time over on the West Coast in
Speaker 3: Silicon Valley while she was studying. Check out Proto. It's
Speaker 3: Holly's third record. It is out now on four A D.
Speaker 3: And also check out the first record that we the
Speaker 3: first tape that I talked to her about. She's called Car.
Speaker 3: You can find out on YouTube and I have linked
Speaker 3: to that in the bottom of this podcast. But for
Speaker 3: now here is myself and Holly Herndon sat in a
Speaker 3: hallway on floor three of a hotel near the Barbercane
Speaker 3: Center as people kind of come and go, They stroll
Speaker 3: past us every now and then, and we just try
Speaker 3: to do our best to make this episode of Midnight
Speaker 3: Chats as normal as possible. I feel like we did
Speaker 3: a good job and don't forget that. If you do
Speaker 3: like this episode of Midnight Chats, you can support this
Speaker 3: podcast by visiting loudon quiet dot com forward slash subscribe
Speaker 3: and they'll see that. We also make a monthly music
Speaker 3: magazine and for just three pounds a month, we will
Speaker 3: send you our next nine issues. And while you're there
Speaker 3: on the site, why not do a little search for
Speaker 3: Holly Herndon and there you'll be able to read the
Speaker 3: cover feature that we reference in this podcast, which does
Speaker 3: a more in depth job of exploring Holly's career, her music,
Speaker 3: and particularly her new album Proto When that Lift open.
Speaker 2: Hello, madam.
Speaker 3: So I'm going to think they're in some immersive theater experience. Well,
Speaker 3: we're just sat here. What a cool hotel. So we've decayed,
Speaker 3: We've we've moved from the barbercane. The alarm was too much.
Speaker 2: Yes, and just as we were leaving it stopped.
Speaker 3: It stopped. But that's okay, Yeah, that's the way it goes.
Speaker 3: So I want to ask you. You went on to
Speaker 3: it with Radiohead and they had the big glories.
Speaker 2: Right of of course?
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I because say you know, they go to
Speaker 1: these kind of like giant I mean, this wasn't like
Speaker 1: a stadium tour for them.
Speaker 2: I think it was a more intimate show tour for them,
Speaker 2: which for me was like, oh my god, these are
Speaker 2: the biggest rooms I've ever played.
Speaker 1: But yeah, they have like a whole crew, you know,
Speaker 1: who like build up the stage and it's really impressive
Speaker 1: actually to like build up this whole world and then
Speaker 1: tear it down every night and then it drives off
Speaker 1: to the next city. So, you know, we don't have
Speaker 1: anything as complicated as that, So we try to have
Speaker 1: things that are like pretty uniform that you can ask
Speaker 1: at each kind of location, like you know, tables and
Speaker 1: platforms and screens and things like that.
Speaker 3: Do you have Spawn with you?
Speaker 2: We don't have Spawn with us. She doesn't travel, not yet.
Speaker 1: Actually, just before we left, Jewels are collaborator who just
Speaker 1: got married Jewels. Yes, so Jewels just picked up Spawn
Speaker 1: and is gonna be working with her pretty intensively for
Speaker 1: the next couple of weeks because we really want to
Speaker 1: try to start with her live.
Speaker 2: But it's like there's this latency issue.
Speaker 3: Sure, and I imagine transporting an AI baby.
Speaker 2: Well yeah, right now, we have.
Speaker 1: She's like her body is in this kind of like tower.
Speaker 1: It's like, you know, desktop tower. But we don't really
Speaker 1: need all of that space really, we just need enough
Speaker 1: room for like a fan and for the GPU. So
Speaker 1: we're looking into smaller, little baby towers.
Speaker 3: Sure, it occurred to me yesterday that we're obviously at
Speaker 3: the end of a decade pretty much.
Speaker 2: Oh no, are you wanting me to say something profound?
Speaker 3: No, it wasn't that. It's not that. But then I
Speaker 3: was thinking that you're because you released your first I mean,
Speaker 3: this decade is where your career started, Like in twenty
Speaker 3: eleven was when you put up your first tape, tape
Speaker 3: car Okay, so this is your career decade. I guess
Speaker 3: Oh god, I think is that?
Speaker 2: And I'm retiring?
Speaker 3: But I was going to say, like, what do you
Speaker 3: remember of that of releasing that tape, because it's like
Speaker 3: it was a one track, forty five minute track, wasn't
Speaker 3: it on a cassette called professional All Podcasts?
Speaker 2: He handled well, didn't he was?
Speaker 3: He was relaxed. That's our first lift.
Speaker 2: Guess what what was the question?
Speaker 3: What do you remember of that time of like putting
Speaker 3: that tape out?
Speaker 1: And that was in such a different like mindset at
Speaker 1: that point. I mean I never imagined to have the
Speaker 1: size audience that I have, Like to be playing the
Speaker 1: Barbican tomorrow to like two thousand people's kind of blowing
Speaker 1: my mind.
Speaker 2: It's a really exciting. But I just never expected that.
Speaker 2: Back then.
Speaker 1: I was just like, you know, playing a little noise show.
Speaker 1: And this cassette was made specifically for a noise label
Speaker 1: that called Third Sex, based in Chicago. And so I
Speaker 1: was asked to make a noise cassette for this label
Speaker 1: because he saw the guy who ran the label who
Speaker 1: passed away actually a couple of years ago. He saw
Speaker 1: me play at like a noise venue and was like, oh,
Speaker 1: I'd love for you to make a tape. And so
Speaker 1: I was like, ah, a cassette, Like who listens to cassettes?
Speaker 1: Where do people listen to cassettes? I mean I had
Speaker 1: back then, I had a cassette player on my toilet
Speaker 1: with like a selection of cassettes if you needed to
Speaker 1: spend a.
Speaker 2: Little extra time on the toilet.
Speaker 1: But so I asked him to ask his audience, like
Speaker 1: where do they listen to their cassettes? And he actually
Speaker 1: like sent out a survey which is kind of wild
Speaker 1: that people would respond, and they did. I mean, I
Speaker 1: don't think it was like a huge number of people,
Speaker 1: but most of the people that responded said they listened
Speaker 1: in their car, which I thought was wild because you know,
Speaker 1: like these must be some old cars. Yeah, yeah, so
Speaker 1: you know, in the States, I think it was like
Speaker 1: a largely American audience. People are driving still driving like
Speaker 1: vast distances, especially if you're not living in a city,
Speaker 1: like if you're in the suburbs, you're definitely still commuting
Speaker 1: a lot. So I was like, Okay, I'm gonna make
Speaker 1: something specifically for the car. And I had a car
Speaker 1: at the time because I was commuting between Palo Alto
Speaker 1: and San Francisco like an hour every day back and forth.
Speaker 2: God, I sound like really out of bread. Why it's
Speaker 2: like my last gasps.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I made it specifically for the Toyota Matrix
Speaker 1: that I was driving at the time.
Speaker 2: So I would like work on stuff.
Speaker 1: On my computer and then go down to my car
Speaker 1: and play it in my car and see how it
Speaker 1: was resonating the car, and then like tweak the frequency
Speaker 1: range to like works with it. So it's not gonna
Speaker 1: work perfectly in everyone's car. But it was like made
Speaker 1: specifically for this car. And then I did things with
Speaker 1: like the windows. I like recorded the window, I you know,
Speaker 1: did a lot of like field recording of the car.
Speaker 1: I made like a fake PSA radio announce. It was
Speaker 1: just fun.
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 1: I was just like messing around, and I didn't imagine
Speaker 1: that that many people would ever hear it.
Speaker 3: It was just well, you can listen to this on
Speaker 3: it's on YouTube.
Speaker 2: Now it's on YouTube.
Speaker 3: Yeah, oh wow, someone's put it up there. I listened
Speaker 3: to it.
Speaker 1: Yes, it's not that's not where it's intended to take
Speaker 1: it down or no, Britain, bring YouTube to your car.
Speaker 3: Funny enough, like even though you say, like back then,
Speaker 3: obviously you had no like a cassette tape of experimental
Speaker 3: sound made for a car. You never expected to be
Speaker 3: sat in this lobby with people walking past us. But
Speaker 3: I'm going to play the barbercan tomorrow to two thousand
Speaker 3: people having made a record with the use of machine learning.
Speaker 3: But oddly, when you hear that first tape, it kind
Speaker 3: of it makes sense that you would end up here,
Speaker 3: Like the sound of it, like the fact that all
Speaker 3: of those things that you said of making field recordings
Speaker 3: and the thought that went into that that cassette, it
Speaker 3: makes sense that you would end up at this point
Speaker 3: with Proto.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I see what you're saying.
Speaker 1: I've never really had like a super conventional way of
Speaker 1: recording songs like it's you know, I'm I still like
Speaker 1: to kind of and I still have a lot of
Speaker 1: learning to do about kind of like perfecting the mix
Speaker 1: and all that kind of stuff.
Speaker 2: But yeah, I think I.
Speaker 1: Have a very idiosyncratic approach to recording into kind of
Speaker 1: like collaging things together.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So Proto was released in May, Okay. Well, because
Speaker 3: of everything that goes into that record and the themes
Speaker 3: of it and the way you've made it and all
Speaker 3: of the stuff about AI and things, and you've obviously
Speaker 3: been talking to people since then about it. Have people
Speaker 3: been getting anything consistently wrong about it? Because there's a
Speaker 3: lot to unpack when you don't, you know, as when
Speaker 3: if you're a journalist who doesn't know anything about as
Speaker 3: I was when I met you, I didn't know anything
Speaker 3: about what AI is is. Have people understood it? If
Speaker 3: people got the point of it, I think.
Speaker 1: It's generally people who don't spend time with it and
Speaker 1: assume that because it's dealing with a certain kind of technology,
Speaker 1: that it's kind of like an endorsement or a kind
Speaker 1: of like Silicon Valley shilling. And that's usually people who
Speaker 1: really haven't looked into what we're doing, or it's like
Speaker 1: a misunderstanding, or they just are like really turned off
Speaker 1: by the concept of like working with technology in this
Speaker 1: kind of way.
Speaker 2: Like I ran into a musician I'm not going.
Speaker 1: To name her here, but like this really amazing musician
Speaker 1: and we were chatting. I ran into her in a
Speaker 1: museum the other the other day, and I was telling
Speaker 1: we were talking about the album.
Speaker 2: She was like, Yeah, when I.
Speaker 1: Heard AI and Music, I was like, ah, I don't,
Speaker 1: like I want nothing to do with that, Like that
Speaker 1: doesn't sound like anything that I'm into. But then after
Speaker 1: hearing you talk about why you did it in your approach,
Speaker 1: now I understand that it's something else, and then it's
Speaker 1: something that I would be interested in, you know, so
Speaker 1: I think, ah, yeah, something about like you know, the
Speaker 1: like endless feed, Like people sometime just see like a
Speaker 1: little one liner in their like feed and then they're
Speaker 1: like we often get like reduced to tags or keywords
Speaker 1: like Holly herndon tech AI music, and then it's like
Speaker 1: next and like the next.
Speaker 2: Person, you're just like, oh my god, there's like so
Speaker 2: much more than that. But I mean I get.
Speaker 1: It, like everyone has like a finite amount of attention
Speaker 1: and like amount of screen time, and so I think
Speaker 1: sometimes that's what's kind of like misunderstood about it.
Speaker 3: Have you managed to boil it down or even wanted
Speaker 3: to do this to like reduce it to some like
Speaker 3: a sound bite when someone asks you, not necessarily somebody
Speaker 3: who's then going to write an article about it, but
Speaker 3: just if you know, a friend of a friend asks, oh,
Speaker 3: what's your album about? Is there a way to even
Speaker 3: say what proto is in a in a short concise
Speaker 3: way that people can understand?
Speaker 1: Oh god, I probably should think about like the what's
Speaker 1: it called the elevator?
Speaker 2: Bitch?
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, No, I don't think I have such a
Speaker 1: concise way of putting it. I mean I think, you know,
Speaker 1: when people bring up the AI thing, I say, well,
Speaker 1: I wanted to work with AI directly, like hands on,
Speaker 1: so that I could formulate my own opinion and my
Speaker 1: own kind of like specific kind of like stance on
Speaker 1: the technology without kind of relying on second or third
Speaker 1: hand articles kind of because I feel like that's what
Speaker 1: we're fed a lot, are these kind of like hype
Speaker 1: articles about what the technology is doing or what it
Speaker 1: could do, and so I wanted to actually understand what
Speaker 1: its capabilities and limitations were so that I could then
Speaker 1: formulate my opinion about it. Sure, so that is what
Speaker 1: I would say about the AI part, but about the
Speaker 1: overall album, I mean, it's hard because it was like
Speaker 1: a three year process and it's multifaceted. But you know what,
Speaker 1: I think maybe I could say, you know, when you're
Speaker 1: looking at artificial intelligence, it makes you kind of go
Speaker 1: back to the beginning and think about the history of
Speaker 1: human intelligence and the role that music played in that.
Speaker 1: And that's why I went back to look at vocal
Speaker 1: traditions around the world and the way that you know,
Speaker 1: community and cultures have have developed this vocal technology as
Speaker 1: a survival mechanism and how that's how that's contributed to
Speaker 1: our shared human intelligence.
Speaker 3: That record and coming to meet you to do that
Speaker 3: feature we did has genuinely made me think differently about
Speaker 3: AI and readdress my thoughts on it, because I think
Speaker 3: that the kind of light bulb moment was when you
Speaker 3: were talking about how you've used AI to try and
Speaker 3: actually have more human interaction, because I think that's the
Speaker 3: misunderstanding of proto for people when before it came out,
Speaker 3: maybe or they read anything about it was musician makes
Speaker 3: AI record, and they just think the whole thing's automated.
Speaker 3: You've not already done anything.
Speaker 1: Right, musicians humans with AI, And that's actually the opposite.
Speaker 3: It's exactly the opposite, because you were feeding, you were
Speaker 3: using big groups of people to feed your AI baby spawn, right,
Speaker 3: and that connection is something you wouldn't have had before
Speaker 3: because you were a solo electronic musician. He was making
Speaker 3: everything on there, you wouldn't have had that kind of
Speaker 3: that group thing. And also the point you made, which
Speaker 3: was technology just generally in our world should free us
Speaker 3: up to be more human and give us more time
Speaker 3: to exactly be normal people and be people and have
Speaker 3: connections with people, which is something I hadn't really thought
Speaker 3: about before.
Speaker 1: If we have agency over it, but oftentimes it's designed
Speaker 1: in a way that it kind of reduces our agency,
Speaker 1: and that's something that I'm constantly pushing back against trying
Speaker 1: to understand how it functions. At like a very big
Speaker 1: infrastructural or like protocol layer. So you know, you can
Speaker 1: like really embed the the kind of like if you
Speaker 1: want to say, ethics or the ideology of a culture
Speaker 1: into the protocol.
Speaker 2: Layer of a technology.
Speaker 1: I mean you can see the value system in the
Speaker 1: very protocol layer. And so that's yeah, that's something that
Speaker 1: I find really fascinating. I want to feel like I
Speaker 1: have a sense of agency. I mean, of course, like
Speaker 1: human will, like free will and all these kinds of things.
Speaker 1: That's like a whole other kettle of worms that I
Speaker 1: really don't want.
Speaker 2: To get into.
Speaker 1: But that was another like rabbit hole when thinking about AI.
Speaker 1: It's like, you know, how much free will do we
Speaker 1: actually have?
Speaker 2: But yeah, when.
Speaker 1: Dealing with technology and dealing with these like highly mediated systems,
Speaker 1: like where does the human fit in? And if if
Speaker 1: especially you know, we can use the kind of the
Speaker 1: performance stage as a metaphor for like a wider.
Speaker 2: Kind of like life experience.
Speaker 1: But you know, if so much of our kind of
Speaker 1: performance is being augmented or taken care of by these
Speaker 1: kind of automated systems, what is that free us up
Speaker 1: to do?
Speaker 2: On stage?
Speaker 1: In my mind, it doesn't free us up to just
Speaker 1: stand there and let the lights and everything do all
Speaker 1: the work for us, and we get bored and we
Speaker 1: just stand there. It frees us up to do something else.
Speaker 1: And for me, I was really missing this idea of
Speaker 1: musicking with people in real time, like singing with people,
Speaker 1: performing with people, improvising with people. And if the computer
Speaker 1: can be this kind of like brain that's organizing these
Speaker 1: things around us so we don't have to worry about X,
Speaker 1: y Z, then we can really focus on each other. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that was kind of the point.
Speaker 3: Has it met as the whole experience made to you?
Speaker 3: It must have changed your thoughts on technology, your relationship
Speaker 3: with technology or I mean.
Speaker 1: That's been like an ongoing thing for the last, as
Speaker 1: you've put it, decades.
Speaker 2: Thanks for the reminder. No, but yeah, yeah it's been.
Speaker 2: I mean I.
Speaker 1: Wasn't really dealing with technology that directly or that intimately
Speaker 1: until I moved to California. I really think that we're
Speaker 1: somehow like a product of our environments.
Speaker 2: You know. I was in Berlin and I.
Speaker 1: Was surrounded by a certain kind of like milieu of
Speaker 1: like thought, and then I moved to the Bay Area
Speaker 1: and I was exposed to like a whole different approach
Speaker 1: to technology, and I think the kind of like the
Speaker 1: reputation that the Bay Area gets is from like the
Speaker 1: Googles and the facebooks and the Apple. But that the Apple,
Speaker 1: the Apple. But I mean that's like one part of
Speaker 1: that area. It's like the Bay Area is such a complicated.
Speaker 2: Culture.
Speaker 1: It's such an amazing part of the world. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's it's a very like technologically.
Speaker 2: Forward place and there's not one single ideology. There's a
Speaker 2: ton of like diy tech weirdos there.
Speaker 1: That's where I kind of drew my inspiration people that
Speaker 1: were teaching me how to how to program for the
Speaker 1: first time and how to have some sort of agency
Speaker 1: over my own practice.
Speaker 2: I mean, that's the thing.
Speaker 1: With a lot of electronic music is you kind of
Speaker 1: like load up whatever software has.
Speaker 2: Been designed by an engineer.
Speaker 1: And already in that software, so many decisions have been made,
Speaker 1: Like you open up the template, the BPM, the the meter,
Speaker 1: all these things are kind of decided. You throw in
Speaker 1: like the instruments that are easiest to throw in and
Speaker 1: the tune. You know, everything has just been in a
Speaker 1: lot of ways kind of like predetermined, and you can
Speaker 1: hear that like I can go out and you know,
Speaker 1: I love Ableton, but I can go out and be like, oh,
Speaker 1: this is such an Ableton song, do you know what
Speaker 1: I mean? It just has that Ableton sounds. And that's
Speaker 1: for me not having agency over the tool. Ableton's an
Speaker 1: amazing tool. Don't let it write for you, like use
Speaker 1: it to write, to write your own thing and have
Speaker 1: your own kind of idea that you're bringing to it.
Speaker 1: So that's why it was important to me to learn
Speaker 1: how to program with Max and to and not even
Speaker 1: just that, just like figuring out idiosyncratic production methods that
Speaker 1: were really specific to whatever topic I was dealing with.
Speaker 1: So like if I was dealing with surveillance self surveillance,
Speaker 1: I was using maths net concrete software that he made,
Speaker 1: you know, record myself and spying all myself things like that.
Speaker 1: So it's like, you know, I'm not I'm not that heavily.
Speaker 1: Sometimes I rely on lyrics, but I'm not just relying
Speaker 1: on lyrics to express an idea. I want the kind
Speaker 1: of process of the making of the thing to be
Speaker 1: about the thing so that you can hear it kind
Speaker 1: of tech texturally and tamborly in the material itself. And
Speaker 1: that's maybe the thread that you're hearing from car to
Speaker 1: proto is this kind of yeah, and what what ends
Speaker 1: up happening is you have like a lo fi and
Speaker 1: a high fi contrast and try and trying to make
Speaker 1: those those worlds live together.
Speaker 2: I mean, I.
Speaker 1: Also like, was really lucky to get to work with
Speaker 1: Marta Salogni. She's a mixing engineer based here in London
Speaker 1: and she's amazing.
Speaker 2: Oh my god. Mixing drums with her was just like.
Speaker 1: Whoa, yeah that was her proto and like, oh my god,
Speaker 1: that was really fun.
Speaker 2: Just like all of a sudden, it's like a stadium
Speaker 2: drum kit. That's like I was like, oh my god.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So we're getting to collaborate with people like that
Speaker 1: also kind of like you know, bring things to life,
Speaker 1: and I call it.
Speaker 3: It's interesting to hear that you that you say about
Speaker 3: the Bay Area and the Silicon Valley kind of the
Speaker 3: DIY element of that, because the presumption is that when
Speaker 3: you think of those tech starts that become Instagram or
Speaker 3: Facebook or whatever, that DIY is the last thing they are.
Speaker 3: They are capitalist machines, and they are and they kind
Speaker 3: of I mean they are, But is so is there
Speaker 3: is there in the Bay areas that in this tech world.
Speaker 3: Is everyone gunning for that? Though, Like even like the
Speaker 3: DIY people that are doing interesting things, and they are
Speaker 3: they all aiming or am I oversimplifying that?
Speaker 2: I think you're oversimplifying it.
Speaker 1: It's it's a part of the world that's extremely technologically
Speaker 1: like highly educated, like over educated kind of like part
Speaker 1: of the world. It's like and there you have so
Speaker 1: many various viewpoints. I mean, it's I think the people
Speaker 1: that get the most attention are of course the Apple
Speaker 1: and the Facebook because they have the most power. But
Speaker 1: you have all kinds of divergent ideologies and approaches, you know,
Speaker 1: you have like, uh, there's a little uh, there's a
Speaker 1: little startup called Keith McMillan Instruments where some of my
Speaker 1: friends from Mills and Stanford have have worked where they
Speaker 1: are just kind of like developing new MIDI controllers and
Speaker 1: like weird instruments, and there's they are not trying to
Speaker 1: be the next Instagram. They're just like, you know, people
Speaker 1: who want to develop electronic music instruments to like the
Speaker 1: next the next phase, and they're they're just like beautiful nerds.
Speaker 1: There's like that there, and then there's a lot of
Speaker 1: just like really genuinely curious, nerdy people there who are
Speaker 1: just like really enjoy the research.
Speaker 2: I mean Karma where I was based at Stanford.
Speaker 1: The origins of that of that institution or John Chowning
Speaker 1: is a composer and he was messing around with oscillators
Speaker 1: in the lab and he discovered that if he modulated
Speaker 1: the frequency of one sign tone, it would change the
Speaker 1: tambre and the frequency of another sign tone. And that's
Speaker 1: where we got FM synthesis, and that went into cell
Speaker 1: phone technology, and that went into the you know, Yamaha synthesizers.
Speaker 1: And I mean, you don't want to kind of like
Speaker 1: over romanticize this kind of like garage narrative, but there
Speaker 1: are there are people just kind of like tinkering and
Speaker 1: doing things like that for the love of it.
Speaker 3: With what you've got and you've got this AI baby, Now, Spawn,
Speaker 3: what do you? Is there a plan of what you
Speaker 3: do next? Like? Has have you been continually Because the
Speaker 3: way I understand it was Spawn was constantly learning things
Speaker 3: like constantly being fed kind of data and interpreting that.
Speaker 3: Has that been continuing since the record came out? Is there?
Speaker 1: Well? We took a little break to work on the
Speaker 1: live show and then you know, Jules was wedding planning. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but no, we've been working I would say, like on
Speaker 1: and off since the record came out. We've been trying
Speaker 1: to get this real real time system working. And it
Speaker 1: used to have like a thirty second latency if it's
Speaker 1: even a latency at that that amount of time, and
Speaker 1: now it's down to like a second or something, I
Speaker 1: don't know, it's pretty short or maybe even like half
Speaker 1: a second.
Speaker 2: So we're trying to get it to be like, you know, so.
Speaker 3: How would that work? That would work? You would speak,
Speaker 3: you would feed something in, and you could.
Speaker 2: Perform through this kind of like model.
Speaker 3: And at the moment there's about half a second to
Speaker 3: a second delay. Yeah, exactly, actually happening. Yeah, that's quick
Speaker 3: though to get that down from thirty seconds.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's getting better, but the problem is it sounds
Speaker 1: kind of like shit.
Speaker 2: That's the thing.
Speaker 1: You have to be really patient, like it sounds like,
Speaker 1: you know, it's like very like raspy and everything, but
Speaker 1: like it you I know that it'll get better because
Speaker 1: we've been there before and we yeah, so we I
Speaker 1: don't want to just do like some sort of like
Speaker 1: parlor trick on stage and be like, you know, like
Speaker 1: sing something and then thirty seconds later this like comes
Speaker 1: out and it's like see we do real time. I'm like, no,
Speaker 1: I want it to be something interesting. So that's why
Speaker 1: we've been trying to develop it.
Speaker 2: But yeah, it's something that we'll keep doing.
Speaker 1: It's just one of those things where you know, like
Speaker 1: we've had a lot of people be like, oh, can
Speaker 1: we like what about March twenty twenty we can have
Speaker 1: And I'm like, I don't know. I don't know when
Speaker 1: it's gonna when the like aha moment is gonna come
Speaker 1: and it's gonna be like, oh shit, like now it
Speaker 1: sounds cool.
Speaker 2: You just don't know.
Speaker 1: So we're just trying to not get exasperated and just
Speaker 1: continue to work with it and then hopefully something cool
Speaker 1: will come out.
Speaker 3: It has the whole experience taught you to be a
Speaker 3: lot to be more patient. Were you patient or you
Speaker 3: a patient person anyway?
Speaker 2: Oh God, ask Matt.
Speaker 1: No, I'm not patient at all, but I mean I
Speaker 1: don't know, it depends. Maybe with work, I am a
Speaker 1: little bit more patient. I think it also just makes
Speaker 1: you kind of like it's made me like aestheticize the
Speaker 1: concepts around AI as well and kind of like dig
Speaker 1: deeper into the vocal stuff and.
Speaker 2: Maybe kind of like yeah, maybe like conceptualize. You almost
Speaker 2: have to like.
Speaker 1: Imagine what it could do even though it's not there yet,
Speaker 1: and then kind of like use that as material as
Speaker 1: well or like you know, that's one of the reasons
Speaker 1: why we did the training sets, the column response.
Speaker 2: Where we would just wait for this elevator to chuck
Speaker 2: elevator tools closing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so that's why we were doing these kind of
Speaker 1: training ceremonies where you know, we would do column response
Speaker 1: singing with the audience to create voice models of the
Speaker 1: audience to show people how a training set would be
Speaker 1: made because SPAWN wasn't there yet for the real time system.
Speaker 1: So we're like, okay, how you know, how do we
Speaker 1: make a performance out of the making of the data sets?
Speaker 1: Like actually the whole process of training and all of that,
Speaker 1: that's all very performative. I mean, you're performing for SPAWN,
Speaker 1: so we're like, how do how do you make a
Speaker 1: performance out.
Speaker 2: Of that for the public.
Speaker 1: So it's it's made me kind of like have to
Speaker 1: like open up the process as a performance itself.
Speaker 3: Now, I know you would have been asked that this
Speaker 3: is I imagine this is the thing you have been
Speaker 3: asked the most since this record came out. I'm going
Speaker 3: to ask it anyway about your relationship with Spawn people.
Speaker 3: Is that been the thing that people say, like, yeah,
Speaker 3: do you feel close? Do you have this bond with Spawn,
Speaker 3: your AI machine?
Speaker 1: I think it depends on what we're working on at
Speaker 1: the time. I mean, definitely when we were doing a
Speaker 1: lot of my own voice model stuff that there's like
Speaker 1: an uncannoness to that or like an timacy there, because
Speaker 1: I was hearing my voice played back to myself but
Speaker 1: through a different logic, through like a different intelligence, and
Speaker 1: so that was Yeah, I mean that's interesting and intimate
Speaker 1: for sure.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but I'm careful not.
Speaker 1: To try and you know, it's you know, Spawn's not
Speaker 1: a human baby.
Speaker 2: You don't want to be that my actual baby.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean the baby metaphor is really useful in
Speaker 1: a lot of ways, but I want to be careful
Speaker 1: and not you know, necessarily anthropomorphize her. And that's also
Speaker 1: why we haven't given her like some sort of avatar
Speaker 1: kind of form to latch onto, because it's not it's
Speaker 1: not really about that like humanizing.
Speaker 3: You don't want to be that. Persons who meets people
Speaker 3: at parties and and you say to you, they say,
Speaker 3: do you have kids? And he say, yeah, I've got
Speaker 3: I've got a daughter. She's called Spawn.
Speaker 2: And then the moms with the human babies are like,
Speaker 2: oh my god.
Speaker 3: I go away and take Spawn out on play god
Speaker 3: with other human babies. Yeah, you don't really want to
Speaker 3: be going down that route.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's true.
Speaker 1: I mean my friends are pretty patient, but I don't
Speaker 1: know if they would lose Yeah, patients there.
Speaker 3: You grew up in, like Tennessee, a rural and quite
Speaker 3: religious place.
Speaker 2: Right, extremely religious.
Speaker 3: Do you get Do you get back that much? John
Speaker 3: Johnston City? Johnson City?
Speaker 2: Right, Johnson City.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's kind of difficult because it requires minimum three planes.
Speaker 1: Oh okay, it's pretty expensive because it's you know, just not.
Speaker 2: Like a very well traveled route.
Speaker 3: Do you have family this I do?
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I try to get back there as much as possible, but.
Speaker 1: Not super often. Sometimes I meet my family in other cities. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: I kind of like meet in the middle situation.
Speaker 3: How I mean, have you ever played a show there?
Speaker 1: Not in Johnson City, But I played a show in Knoxville,
Speaker 1: which is a it's like a college town, that's an
Speaker 1: hour and a half hour and a half west and
Speaker 1: there is a kind of like an arty music.
Speaker 2: Festival there called Big Ears. Okay, and know if you've
Speaker 2: heard of.
Speaker 3: It, good night, I wish I had.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, one year Laurie Anderson curated it, right, Okay,
Speaker 1: so it's like I.
Speaker 2: Don't know if that's like a sign.
Speaker 1: Of approval, but they have really great I mean they
Speaker 1: have great people, great curation. And yeah, we played that
Speaker 1: one year and my family came over. That was pretty
Speaker 1: wild because they were like whooping in the in the back.
Speaker 3: How do you think, like in your hometown where you
Speaker 3: grew up, would your music how would you how do
Speaker 3: you think that it would go down?
Speaker 1: I think it would go down now better than ever before,
Speaker 1: because there's so much music that might sound familiar. I mean,
Speaker 1: like the like Frontier, the beginning is this like acapella
Speaker 1: sacred harp song, and I think that would.
Speaker 2: Go down well. And then it would go into the
Speaker 2: kind of remix of the song and they'd be.
Speaker 1: Like whoa, what is this? But there would be that
Speaker 1: entry point of the you know, the opening a cappella parts.
Speaker 1: I think there's more entry points for my hometown now
Speaker 1: than maybe ever before, but it would still definitely be
Speaker 1: very alien.
Speaker 3: Yeah, because there are points of That's what. That's one
Speaker 3: thing about this record more than your previous two, I think,
Speaker 3: is that there are those kind of roots in like
Speaker 3: vocal harmonies and choir singing and that kind of thing.
Speaker 3: It feels like this record has a bit of all
Speaker 3: the places that you that you've lived in or into it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, in some ways, for sure.
Speaker 3: Do you know what you're going to do for your
Speaker 3: next one? Yet?
Speaker 2: That's a cruel question.
Speaker 1: Am. My good friend Jalen, She's like, whenever anybody asked
Speaker 1: her that, she just leave the end of discussion.
Speaker 2: She's like, what do you want for me? I just
Speaker 2: made this thing.
Speaker 3: Just give them birth to this baby, don't ask for
Speaker 3: another one. Now, that is a cruel question. I suppose
Speaker 3: the only reason I ask it is just because I
Speaker 3: know how much has gone into this one. It feels
Speaker 3: like more than and you know, almost any other record
Speaker 3: I can think of in terms of like to get
Speaker 3: it there. Yeah, but I suppose that makes it the
Speaker 3: cruelest questionable. It makes it extra cruel.
Speaker 1: To you, I guess, And it doesn't make any sense
Speaker 1: like my approach I have this like really unwieldy, like
Speaker 1: time consuming.
Speaker 2: Conceptual approach.
Speaker 1: Even though that's like a bad word now since that
Speaker 1: article came out. God yeah, but it's just this, it's
Speaker 1: a it's a very time consuming approach.
Speaker 2: In today's kind of like musical landscape.
Speaker 1: It's more about like these kind of like fast releases
Speaker 1: and like constantly being present, and it's like kind of
Speaker 1: antithetical to the way that I operate. So who knows
Speaker 1: what's going to happen to the album format in general.
Speaker 1: I still like making albums, but of course it's not
Speaker 1: like it doesn't have to be the definitive format for
Speaker 1: releasing work. I mean, it's only been around for like
Speaker 1: how many years, you know, it's there. There are other Yeah,
Speaker 1: there are other formats.
Speaker 2: I don't know. We'll see.
Speaker 1: I have some ideas for some some other projects in mind,
Speaker 1: but I don't want to talk about.
Speaker 3: Okay, that's fair enough. And the other thing that's happened
Speaker 3: since we did our article was, I think a couple
Speaker 3: of weeks after we met, you were going to go
Speaker 3: and do your finish complete your PhD.
Speaker 2: Yes at Stamford and I did Did you do it?
Speaker 2: I did?
Speaker 3: And did you did you have to how did it go?
Speaker 3: So this is this was that was a defense we
Speaker 3: call them, I think we call them vibors. Here is
Speaker 3: where you go. You go and defend what you've what
Speaker 3: you've studied exactly, and they say, yes you can have
Speaker 3: your PhD or no you can't.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, they asked you a bunch of questions and
Speaker 1: you have to give a presentation and the whole community.
Speaker 3: Is there and you had to go to Stamford for this.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah, you have to be there.
Speaker 1: You have to give a presentation and it has to
Speaker 1: be open to the community, so anyone from the community
Speaker 1: can come and be like.
Speaker 2: You lie or whatever. You know, you can have that.
Speaker 1: Yes I objected, Yeah, but no one objected luckily, and
Speaker 1: I got through and then I had to do some
Speaker 1: tweaks to my text that then I sent in later.
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, so it's all wrapped up.
Speaker 3: Now done it is. Yeah, congratulations. How long did how
Speaker 3: long did you? You did it quite quickly?
Speaker 2: No, I did it. No, it wasn't at all. I
Speaker 2: mean I was touring and.
Speaker 1: Releasing Yeah, excuse it was seven years total, Okay, but
Speaker 1: I mean it's also it's hard to compare it to
Speaker 1: the UK programs because the US is set up in
Speaker 1: a different way, like the first year is more kind
Speaker 1: of like an extended master's program where you're taking full coursework,
Speaker 1: and the second and third year you're taking coursework and
Speaker 1: you have a teaching requirement. So there's a lot of
Speaker 1: teaching training happening in the US system that I don't
Speaker 1: think happens so much in the UK system. You're not
Speaker 1: really required to teach, but it's also funded in the States,
Speaker 1: so it's like a job. Like, you know, I had
Speaker 1: funding for like five six years, which is that. I mean, honestly,
Speaker 1: that's how I kind of like transitioned from working full time.
Speaker 2: I used to work at a children's museum.
Speaker 1: Did Yeah, I was a manager of the like interactive
Speaker 1: exhibits there. Okay, So I had like a walkie talkie
Speaker 1: on my belt and I would sit at my desk working,
Speaker 1: and then I had a crew who would like go
Speaker 1: fix exhibits when they would break.
Speaker 2: But then when they would go.
Speaker 1: Well, luckily it wasn't usually that, but it was more
Speaker 1: like you know this, like these networked computers aren't talking
Speaker 1: to each other, and now they can't.
Speaker 2: Do their claymation video and everyone's crying, and.
Speaker 1: So like when my crew would go on their lunch break,
Speaker 1: then I would have the walkie talking and it was like,
Speaker 1: you know, you just like get like a call and
Speaker 1: you go down there and there's like all these kids
Speaker 1: and you have to like kind of troubleshoot tech stuff
Speaker 1: while kids are.
Speaker 2: Like trying to get in there, and that's why, you know.
Speaker 1: So I have had so many tech meltdowns on stage
Speaker 1: and people were like, you're always so.
Speaker 2: Calm, and I'm like, yeah, like I'm so used to
Speaker 2: having people like.
Speaker 1: Me.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's like it just doesn't anywhere.
Speaker 1: I'm just like, if they're just machines, they're either it's
Speaker 1: either going to work or it's not going to No
Speaker 1: one's going to die.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's gonna be fine.
Speaker 1: Yeah, That's what I was doing before I got into Stanford.
Speaker 1: I didn't imagine that they would let me into that
Speaker 1: program like I was.
Speaker 2: I was really surprised.
Speaker 1: But then when when they let me in, then that
Speaker 1: was when I was able to kind of like transition
Speaker 1: to doing music full time because I had this salary
Speaker 1: and you know, in the States.
Speaker 2: It's always this question of like healthcare, Who's.
Speaker 1: Going to pay for your health insurance, So going from
Speaker 1: the museum to Stanford, I was able to have health
Speaker 1: care and all that kind of stuff.
Speaker 2: So yeah, it's always really.
Speaker 1: Funny to me when people were like, oh, you went
Speaker 1: to Stanford.
Speaker 2: I'm like, yeah, I mean I got a job, Like.
Speaker 1: I got a really cool job, and I was really
Speaker 1: lucky to get a cool job. But it's you know,
Speaker 1: it was I don't know, I just find that really funny,
Speaker 1: but yeah, I was. I was really lucky too that
Speaker 1: they that they gave me that support and then I
Speaker 1: was able to kind of transition because then you have
Speaker 1: a couple of years of funding just to write, and
Speaker 1: then I was able to continue to tour and to develop.
Speaker 1: And yeah, it was definitely that like leg.
Speaker 3: Up, nice one stuff I hated.
Speaker 2: Thanks Stamford.
Speaker 3: Did you enjoy the teaching side of things? Did you
Speaker 3: like that?
Speaker 2: I really did?
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean it depends on the subject, like things that
Speaker 1: I don't that I'm not that I don't know that
Speaker 1: much about.
Speaker 2: I don't enjoy because I'm just like, sorry, guys, I'm
Speaker 2: not that much about.
Speaker 1: But I was able to develop a course with a
Speaker 1: musicologist's PhD student who was there, Victoria. She was really
Speaker 1: interested in writing about kind of like she was really
Speaker 1: interested in writing about electronic contemporary electronic music in like
Speaker 1: an academic way because there hasn't been so much. Of course,
Speaker 1: there are like little pockets, and me as a practitioner,
Speaker 1: we kind of like had a nice balance, I think,
Speaker 1: and so we co taught this class that we were
Speaker 1: able to design ourselves and it was the Aesthetics of
Speaker 1: Electronic Music post to nineteen eighty because in.
Speaker 2: The academy often often things stop in like nineteen seventy
Speaker 2: or something.
Speaker 1: It's like it's like digital happens, and everyone's like, Okay,
Speaker 1: we're not gonna.
Speaker 2: Talk about that. So we really wanted to.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we wanted to talk about contemporary shit that students
Speaker 1: were listening to.
Speaker 3: It sounds good.
Speaker 2: It was fun.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was really fun to like listen to what
Speaker 1: students liked and then be like, oh, okay, like this
Speaker 1: comes from and then like trace it back to its.
Speaker 2: Origins and they didn't know the roots of it.
Speaker 1: And then once you kind of like went down that tree,
Speaker 1: then they all got really into.
Speaker 2: The roots of whatever.
Speaker 1: You know, Like I don't know, if it's like nine
Speaker 1: inch Nails is maybe an example, like one of the students,
Speaker 1: was like super into Nine inch Nails, and I'm like,
Speaker 1: nine inch Nails is like great like pop writing of
Speaker 1: industrial music, and like this is the history of industrial
Speaker 1: music and these are the bands that kind of like
Speaker 1: started this sound. And and then she got super into
Speaker 1: that stuff. And yeah, so I don't know that that's fun.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's so fun. Yeah it sounds good. This has
Speaker 3: been a glamorous setting. We were quite lucky. I think
Speaker 3: we only had about two people come out to lift
Speaker 3: and look at us.
Speaker 2: Bizarrely, I'm sad that we didn't ask them an interview.
Speaker 3: We should have. Yeah, well, I mean, yeah, we should
Speaker 3: have done that. But thank you for coming on the
Speaker 3: podcast for sure. Yeah, anyway, good night,