i want a thread for Holly Herndon

because her album is terrific so far. don't let this one slip you by if you're a fan of experimental electronics and/or lush post-techno type stuff - album manges to do both without compromise.

A sinker, huh? I guess Movement isn't for everyone. If you were disappointed by the Laurel Halo album you might not like this very much (from what I've heard of the LH album, I like it well enough). But there are loads of ideas crammed into this one. If you're not listening on headphones, don't bother BTW.

The first track is pretty much 8 minutes of experimental noise effects with some interesting panning arrangements. Fair enough, but then 'Fade' comes in, and well, I'm not sure how to describe it really, but here's a video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=frmJKaPT5U8

The next track is back in experimental territory. Gasping breath samples are pitched and layered into outlandish chord shapes. A weird exercise, but interesting nonetheless

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0J4JwVewpwY

Haven't quite scratched the surface of the rest of the album, but yeah, I like it so far - just enough chocolate boxing for my tastes.

For some reason I never listened to this album and, fortunately, iTunes radio played me 'Fade'. Now I'm very much enjoying it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nHujh3yA3BE

love this

Is that 'Chorus'? Helluvva song & vid!

whoa, 'Home' is stunning.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I_3mCDJ_iWc

It's great but I got really bored halfway thru

definitely could be half as long, but it really hits my pleasure centers for sounds & texture

yeah, that's amazing

and i think i dig "chorus" even more, great stuff......

Love 'Home'. As NickB pointed out, there are some similarities b/w what Herndon is doing and Katie Gately's music, don't know if any of you thread loiterers have listened to her stuff? (Do. Really, do.)

Also ahnnu's World Music

This recent style is great for sounds and texture but, for me, it has yet to really cohere into a works that I want to return to

I guess I would also lump the last couple d/p/i releases into this "incredibly compelling but largely unlistenable" genre

oh hell yes.
katie gately's "last day" is great, thanks for the tip.

This reminds me of a modern take of Claire Hamill when she did that Voices record.
In a really good way, great track, probably prefer 'Chorus' but both stunning.

Feels like it could go either way with repeated listens though

katie gately's "last day" is great, thanks for the tip.

yeah, lots of similarities to that song in partic in the treatment of the vocals and that whole crunchy destructivist sound

need to make time and watch this whole video at some point

http://call.hollyherndon.com/

Just thought 'oh good, someone started a thread on holly herndon' and it was me :-)

Also ahnnu's World Music

― puff puff post (uh oh I'm having a fantasy), Thursday, September 18, 2014 12:44 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

This album rules

also, thanks for the katie gatley tip emil.y, i'm digging it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_XmHQkFo_co

this was a good listen

I guess I would also lump the last couple d/p/i releases into this "incredibly compelling but largely unlistenable" genre

― puff puff post (uh oh I'm having a fantasy), Thursday, September 18, 2014 12:49 PM (1 month ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

lol the latest d/p/i thing, MN.ROY, overcomes this dumb label I typed out and is prob my fav thing I've heard in a while

more hh:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ybzSWlpgJOA

new album on 4AD in may:
http://4ad.com/news/10/3/2015/hollyherndontoreleaseplatforminmayinterferencevideopremieres

on the cover of the latest issue of the wire.

saw her live show + live interview last year, she is cool

http://4ad.com/news/10/3/2015/hollyherndontoreleaseplatforminmayinterferencevideopremieres

I want a thread for 4AD URLs.

this shit bangs

lmao at how "Lonely At The Top" is straight-up ASMR

First listen through and I dig this a whole lot more than Movement. The previously released tracks are all highlights but Morning Sun and especially An Exit (w/ Amnesia Scanner!!) are excellent too.

wow I just discovered "Chorus" and I am really loving this a lot

the record "Platform" leaked

there is a track on it that is literally ASMR

oh wait someone else noted that before i did lmao

and it's totally unlistenable!

unless you have ASMR I guess

what is amr? i found the whole album an uncompelling drag tbh

*asmr

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autonomous_sensory_meridian_response

has a dedicated ilx thread - ilxor.com/ILX/ThreadSelectedControllerServlet?action=showall&boardid=40&threadid=96481

i kinda love the holly herndon ASMR track??

there are a few great moments on the rest of the album but overall idk

The heck is this ASMR track? Makes me feel irrationally embarrassed.

Which one is the ASMR track? I listened to about 2/3 of Platform on Spotify yesterday and just got a major nostalgia buzz. 2002 laptop music redux. It was pretty though. Will probably end up buying.

this is obviously doing well because they just sent out a warning to people who pre-ordered that shipping might take a while.

Worked at the shop on Saturday and listened to this 3 times. Sounds really good on a nice system -- this is probably my favorite record of the year so far. I didn't get any ASMR reactions from it, but our speakers are in the back of the store.

This album is BANANAS.

I think I might get ASMR reactions! "Lonely at the Top" made me feel... off

pic.twitter.com/KYvQl9TiYH

— Holly Herndon (@hollyherndon) February 13, 2021

i have no idea what any of this shit is

https://xlr8r.com/news/web3-weekly-wrap-holly-herndons-holly-fwb-gatekeeper-nft-takeover-of-times-square-and-more/

lol i knew when i clicked on this that she and her cornball charlatan partner would be on some nft shit

I've been pretty disappointed with her embracing of NFTs - in general I've always liked her takes on futurism and the potential of AI etc but the NFT thing is slowly eroding my respect.

her cornball charlatan partner

??

Mat Dryhurst. He's def a tech nerd who has been heavily involved in that side of her music. They do a podcast together (https://interdependence.fm/) that I enjoyed early on, but he's gone all in on web3/NFT stuff, I had to bail.

I still don't have an opinion about NFTs because the whole thing confuses me. So does crypto.

i assure you its bad

I always hear that thing about all the energy that's used to store NFTs and I shut down fully at that point.

Mat Dryhurst. He's def a tech nerd who has been heavily involved in that side of her music. They do a podcast together (https://interdependence.fm/) that I enjoyed early on, but he's gone all in on web3/NFT stuff, I had to bail.
― change display name (Jordan), Tuesday, 9 November 2021

Inevitable. he went on a huge diatribe the other year about piracy, and when someone pulled him up, he was like I grew up in the middle east, I was pirating video games long before they were available to the Western public - hmmm what was someone named Dryhurst('s) family doing in the middle east in the 80s-90s?

gave a lecture at Strelka - for what it's worth. Some kind of philosopher not being able to google their relationship to the russian govt...

This is very good: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/24/opinion/ezra-klein-podcast-holly-herndon.html

i appreciate that she seems to have one of the most sensible perspectives on how to approach ml stuff as an artist (despite all her other nonsense which thankfully doesn't come through in that interview) but i'm curious if she's actually going to produce any worthwhile art with it - the stuff with the ai model on the last album just wasn't very compelling

All her other nonsense?

curious

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/feb/10/mass-theft-thousands-of-artists-call-for-ai-art-auction-to-be-cancelled

this seems dumb all around

He added: “It is not illegal to use any model to create artwork. I resent that an important debate that should be focused on companies and state policy is being focused on artists grappling with the technology of our time.”

you inserted yourself in the middle of that debate! this is part of the discourse!

I'm not saying this is a mask off moment, but the pontificating and essays and speaking engagements are facile if you personally get challenged and attempt to claim it's not about you

I am confused by what you think he is implying?

As I understand it, he is saying, this is a tool that could be used ethically to create art, and his and Holly’s work was done that way.

Granted, one of his partners in founding a local arts nonprofit is something of a self-clowning oven who tried to argue that the wheel needed to be improved, that people complaining about how his org was managing the million dollars they raised for Ghost Ship Relief Aid should just raise their own million dollars and stop complaining, and he was a dick about returning a piece of antique furniture to an ex-gf.

makes me think of the debate about sampling in the 90s... the technology is inherently plagiaristic but people tended to side with the artists who used samples despite how they were ripping off artists who had already been screwed by the record industry the first time around. the difference being AI-generated art (so far) sucks and is mostly irritating

AI could be used ethically, but it would mean creating some kind of ASCAP entity to ensure all contributors to the training corpus got their cut of all its output

Lol … now we have Spotify… talk about artists being screwed

makes me think of the debate about sampling in the 90s... the technology is inherently plagiaristic but people tended to side with the artists who used samples

no, the courts sided with the artists whose work was plagiarized, thus kneecapping sample culture and having (imo) a deleterious impact on music and creativity.

AI could be used ethically, but it would mean creating some kind of ASCAP entity to ensure all contributors to the training corpus got their cut of all its output

i don't think that's the only way for it to be used ethically, but i agree that it would be one of the optimal ways forward. but it's very important that it be a blanket license situation (like we do with cover-songs), not an individual license situation (as with samples, rip).

my take, largely: https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/what-to-do-about-fake-drake-songs

I get what he is saying, but working in that space when it's notably contentious, and his work is only one of many artists in the exhibition, makes it silly. He's in the mix!

Dryhurst told the Guardian that the piece of art being auctioned was part of an exploration of how the “concept” of his wife appeared in publicly available AI models.

So he didn't create the model, he used the tools by prompting them to generate images including his wife, which the tools knew about for... reasons. Which means it also had many other images it trained on. I get what he's going for, using the tools to both create something but also commenting on the fact that her image was already in there. And he's right about where the focus should be, but he stepped directly in the middle of it by creating what other artists consider derivative work and are attempting litigation

and being involved in litigation isn't inherently bad, it's just what's going to happen when you insert yourself between other artists and the correct target of their litigation. as sean mentioned, this is what's happened before

i do think organized opposition to things like this auction is a really stupid waste of human resources - artists should be working on large-scale actions like the ASCAP one you're describing (which would be determined by legislation), not trying to fight a fight over what's "just" re training data. there's every indication that copyright boards/courts are going to rule that training data isn't a copyright violation; if artists have squandered all their energy/cards on that fight, there won't be anything left for the battle to follow.

agreed, I don't think the lawsuits are useful in the way they're going now

no, the courts sided with the artists whose work was plagiarized, thus kneecapping sample culture

the courts did, but the music fans seemed to side with the sampling artists and didn't particularly care about the sampled artists... not sure that's happening with AI-generated art, people don't seem to like or trust it!

i guess i have a different impression of how mainstream culture (in 1995) responded to the sampling debates, and where the majority stood on "sampling is theft"

but i was also haha only 13 at the time!

oh people agreed that sampling was theft, but they also really loved the albums that made heavy use of samples... the vibe as I recall it was that talking about how it screwed the sampled artists made you kind of a buzzkill

It kinda depended tbh … like it wasn’t that cut and dry.

the difference being AI-generated art (so far) sucks and is mostly irritating

I feel like this is the key point. I was pretty young when this whole debate was going on but do recall a lot of chatter about how sampling meant you didn't need talent anymore or how people liked the original better. But Vanilla Ice and MC Hammer both scored massively catchy hits doing it which both outlived the songs they sampled from. And of course there was Paul's Boutique and 3 Feet High and Rising, incredible albums which put a lot of thought into what they were doing, inspiring entire generations. Nothing AI has done so far is even remotely close - what is a "key" piece of AI art that people actually like? What new doors has it actually opened up? What is it inspiring in people other than "ugh, that's creepy"?

I just worry that a blanket license for AI-generated art would be just the loophole a company like Spotify needed to dump money into an AI engine that very effectively created knockoffs of popular songs they would then own. Like, an up and coming artist could try and sue them for infringement, but Spotify has the $$$ to pay lawyers to claim their AI knockoff was covered under the blanket license. Few new artists would have the resources to fight and win that protracted legal battle. Spotify already controls the content distribution, all they need to do is wait for a few more iterations of increased AI ability, create knockoffs of popular songs, and then have their playlist algorithms favor the knockoffs.

AI could be used ethically, but it would mean creating some kind of ASCAP entity to ensure all contributors to the training corpus got their cut of all its output

To be fair, Dryhurst & HH have actually made effort to create this in some sense (w/Spawning), so I get his irritation that *he of all people* is getting flack for this. But I'm also a bit sick of them and AI art and the whole thing is a bit silly, even if the larger issues do need to be addressed (but probably won't be).

iirc there are plenty of posts I’ve made where I’ve defending their prior work or appreciated that they’re looking at the generative space critically, but I also roll my eyes at the NFTs and what have you

an AI engine that very effectively created knockoffs of popular songs they would then own.

perhaps I'm naive but I don't think people will actually want to listen to these

people watch youtube videos of other people opening stuff, so I think they probably will... I am each new day surprised by how low the profitable entertainment bar can go

they wouldn't watch videos of AI robots opening stuff though. reaction vids are really famous though and I don't know why. it sucks that search results now include the funny video and then a bunch of people reacting to said funny video

reaction vids are really famous though and I don't know why. it sucks that search results now include the funny video and then a bunch of people reacting to said funny video

Um, you answered your own question, very precisely.

well I was gonna say, they're in the algo because they're popular, but then I remembered to take it one step further

I was 17 in '95 and "sampling is theft" was a rockist position. If you were into dance music you just rolled your eyes at that.

low-fi beats to study to is an entire thing that people just throw on and listen to all day. could definitely see the fake Drake stuff just being background noise in the same way. there's just so much background noise these days, and an even duller Drake-like stream is even more of that -- you're not even going to think "wow, I love this and I've got to turn it up!"

just a low and steady hum in the background, where you figure out which type of hum you want

like how they pipe in white noise to office buildings because its too uncomfortably quiet otherwise, but for music

the future and utility of AI-generated music tools isn't copycat songs made from whole algorithmic cloth; it's having tools that let you "make the drums more like (this)" or "come up with a chord progression like (this)," or just cleaning up audio - like "magic wand" photo editing tools - without requiring the time or technical knowledge to make the changes yourself.

it seems transparently obvious to me that when there are better tools like this, there will be artists who make cool stuff with it

that’s definitely the upside!

I didn’t mean to sound too doomerish, but passive music consumption has shifted from the radio to streaming and there’s going to continue to be a break between commodity work and musicians doing mindful creative work. I just don’t especially like the current shape of things

I agree with that, I have wondered if we're at least gonna reach the end of lo-fi or "bedroom" recordings, seems like we may soon just have a plugin that makes your recordings sound somewhat like polished studio recordings

low-fi beats to study to is an entire thing that people just throw on and listen to all day.

imo this feels like a different thing than how music is usually listened to by anyone who's set foot in a record store but yeah I have wondered if there's gonna be a large chunk of people who only want to engage with music in that way. maybe they're the people who just "don't really like music" normally though

music serves many functions, and there's already a massive industry that exists to serve an audience that craves auditory astroturf

if it's a handful of corporations which start meeting that need, with fewer employees than the music industry currently supports, that's going to be bad for (a) musicians' ability to earn $ from a "day job" and (b) emerging artists who use those jobs to get their chops; but it doesn't seem particularly world-changing in terms of the impacts on art or audience.

I mean, during the peak album sales period (almost all CDs) in the late 90s, the number of people buying a lot of music was really low. The average American bought something like 1 - 2 albums a year, iirc!
The rest of us were offsetting that stat

You'll be able to press a button and get a generically hi-fi studio mix from AI, sure, but you can already press a button and get a lo-fi, tape saturated, wobbly one. Choose your aesthetic.

one thing I've heard a lot was that AI was gonna start writing the background music for grocery stores and restaurants which I always thought misunderstands what that music is for. there's all sorts of designed BGM that's cheap or royalty free to set whatever mood you want. they want people to recognize what it is! I think if you had fake versions of Janet Jackson's "Runaway" or whatever it would just freak everyone out