You may have seen the AI band The Velvet Sundown pop up in the news recently and thought "well, that's weird". Long-time fans of the pod probably also thought "when are they going to do an episode on that?" Well, here it is!

If you've been following us for a while you'll know that every 18 months or so we seem to return to broader discussions about where music and technology intersect. It began with an episode on Threatin (if you remember who Threatin is, well done) and how one man's quest for fame led to him faking a massive fanbase. A quest that ended with him playing to empty rooms across the UK, and saw him trying to retcon it into some kind of art hoax.

Later, we discussed what a possible future using AI music might look like in March 2019, looking at the early attempts to create artificial intelligence music and how the data given to streaming platforms could very well be used to create music. An episode that is now quite prescient in retrospect. Mark was actually quite optimistic that a Velvet Sundown-esque AI band scenario would not come to pass. How naïve...

And then in October 2023 we took a two episode deep dive into Spotify playlist manipulation, and how it began way back in the early days of radio with payola. Spotify algorithm manipulation plays a huge role in how the person/entity behind The Velvet Sundown was able to gain so much traction so quickly - reaching 1.1 million plays and potentially earning £35,000+ annually.

This week's episode continues this tradition. We cover some old ground in places (the history of AI music and playlist manipulation), but for the vast majority of the episode we break new ground. We look at the hard numbers around what this synthetic music "artist" stands to make, examine other AI-generated bands like Anna Indiana, The Devil Inside, and Aventhis, ponder both the inventive and interesting uses of artificial intelligence in music as well as the more troubling ones, and look at some possible futures in the wake of all this AI band controversy.

You can also watch this episode on YouTube, if that's your thing. Link is here:

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This week we're talking about US Maple. Which is a bit like saying we're talking about having your teeth drilled without anaesthetic.

The Chicago quartet spent twelve years making music that deliberately disappointed every expectation you might have about rock music. They took guitars, drums, and vocals and somehow made them sound like they were arguing with each other in a language nobody understood. It was brilliant. It was infuriating. It was absolutely necessary.

This is the final part of our Anti Rock trilogy, where we've been exploring bands that knew the rules of rock music inside out and chose to break every single one of them. US Maple didn't just break the rules though. They took the rulebook, fed it through a modified guitar with quarter tone frets, and sang over it like a demented lounge singer having a breakdown.

We get into their impossible discography, their custom instruments that were designed to sound worse, their legendary tour with Pavement where they got pelted with rubbish nightly, and that infamous Oklahoma City incident involving Xanax and a cockroach. We also try to answer the eternal question: why would anyone voluntarily listen to this?

Fair warning: this episode might make you feel slightly seasick. That's entirely by design.

Featuring Ferruccio Quercetti from the brilliant Italian band Cut, who knows more about post punk and experimental music than literally anyone we know.

Highlights:

00:00 Introduction and Welcome
00:58 Meet the Hosts and Anti-Rock Series Recap
05:25 Defining Anti-Rock vs. Post-Rock - The Core Question
18:51 Chicago's Noise Rock Scene and US Maple's Origins
20:32 The Band Formation and Todd Riman's Hybrid Guitar
24:00 "Snagglepuss on a Bender" - Early Recording Stories
31:47 The Commitment to Anti-Rock Philosophy
38:00 The Legendary Oklahoma City Incident
44:00 Shorty: The Band That Spawned US Maple
49:00 Album Deep Dive: Long Hair in Three Stages
59:08 Sang Fat Editor and Quarter-Tone Guitar Experiments
01:08:00 Talker and Working with Michael Gira
01:17:00 Purple on Time - The "Mainstream" Album
01:22:13 Al Johnson's Anti-Rock Manifesto
01:24:46 Why US Maple is "Weirdly Soothing"
01:29:00 Mark's Virgin Takeaway on the Band
01:33:54 Conclusion and Farewell

This week we're diving headfirst into the gloriously pretentious world of No Wave - the three-year New York art scene that somehow managed to influence everything that followed. Chris has somehow convinced Mark and our resident Italian punk professor Ferro to explore how a bunch of art school dropouts in a financially bankrupt New York accidentally created one of music's most important movements.

We start with New York City in 1978: a proper shithole where you'd genuinely risk your life getting a taxi to Brooklyn, Times Square was basically a war zone, and the city had literally gone bankrupt. Perfect conditions, as it turns out, for a load of bohemian kids to move in, pay bugger all rent, and start making the most deliberately difficult music imaginable.

Enter Brian Eno, who's meant to be in New York producing Talking Heads like a normal person, but instead wanders into some art space gig and discovers bands like Teenage Jesus and the Jerks, DNA, Mars, and The Contortions doing something completely mental. Being Brian Eno, he obviously decides to document the whole thing, creating the legendary "No New York" compilation that basically put the entire movement on the map.

We get properly stuck into the key figures: Lydia Lunch being an absolute force of nature in Teenage Jesus and the Jerks, James Chance slapping music critics (literally - he assaulted Robert Christgau), and the various weirdos who decided that what punk really needed was to be even more antagonistic to its audience.

Ferro brings his encyclopaedic knowledge of the European connections, particularly the parallels between New York's urban decay and Berlin's post-war experimental scene. We explore how Einstürzende Neubauten were literally destroying studio floors with sledgehammers whilst Throbbing Gristle were essentially inventing industrial music in their Yorkshire squat.

The conversation sprawls magnificently through Swans' absolutely punishing early albums, the way Sonic Youth emerged from this scene, and how bands like Bush Tetras and Rat at Rat R kept the torch burning. We also dive into some proper tangents about Madonna apparently being in an art punk band with future Swans members (mental) and how this whole movement influenced everything from the Load Records noise rock scene to modern post-metal.

This is part two of our anti-rock trilogy. Last week we tackled the prehistory from musique concrète to Captain Beefheart, and next week we'll finally get to US Maple and try to explain why anyone would voluntarily subject themselves to their particular brand of musical torture.

00:00 Introduction to No Wave and Brian Eno's Influence
00:33 Welcome to the Podcast
01:04 Recap of Previous Episode
02:14 The Rise of No Wave in Late 1970s New York
02:46 Sociological Context of 1970s New York
02:59 Key Figures and Bands in No Wave
03:43 The No New York Compilation Album
07:59 Brian Eno's Role and Impact
11:02 Musical Influence and Legacy of No Wave
20:04 James Chance and The Contortions
22:44 Sonic Youth and Swans: Post No Wave Evolution
25:51 The Influence of Swans on Post-Metal
27:25 Exploring Lesser-Known Bands: Rat at Rat R and Bush Tetras
28:48 The Impact of Foetus and Throbbing Gristle
35:13 Berlin's No Wave Movement and Einstürzende Neubauten
41:08 The Legacy of No Wave in Chicago and Beyond
45:03 Anti-Rock Bands and Their Influence
48:38 Concluding Thoughts and Teasers for Next Episode