✘ Reset! Atlas of Independent Culture and Media
And The future of music in the era of generative AI
Reset! is a network designed and built to document the situation of independent culture and media across Europe and beyond, empower its members as well as to advocate for a repositioning of independence as a core value in the cultural sector. They have published an Atlas of Independent Culture and Media.
“The body of work is intended as a sensitive cartography of independent realities in Europe. Divided into two parts, it aims both to explore specific situations across the continent in a collection of articles, interviews, and varied portraits divided in 8 topic-based volumes (Part 1), and to argue for improvements and developments in the funding systems and in the recognition processes of independent cultural and media structures on a European scale (Part 2).”
All these parts can be now be downloaded for free on their website. I’ve played a small part in this large research with an interview where we dive into the need for communities versus the dominance of MAGMA (Microsoft, Apple, Google, Meta, Amazon). I paint some opportunities around decentralization and how they provide a potential for historical approached to databases as well.
Read Dismantling Digital Dominance in Culture: Exploring Alternatives Models to Tech Giants
Design of AI is a new podcast hosted by Arpy Dragffy Guerrero and Brittany Hobbs. They aim to lay bare how AI products get designed, what that means, and how that impacts the world around us. I spoke to them about the impact of AI in music. We start with algorhythmic discovery and the changes it effected. We also talk about potential futures involving copyright laundering and creative explorations of AI.
Find the episode on the Design of AI website, or check it out via Spotify or your preferred podcast platform.
LINKS
🪩 Dance dance revolution (Hubert Adjei-Kontoh)
“In all this talk about the power of techno and house to liberate and educate, rarely does anyone talk about the music itself. This may come as a surprise, given what I’ve written so far, but there is house and techno that I enjoy, and, sure, some of it contains political commentary. But I don’t consider listening to it, or watching someone DJ it, to be a political act. Lionization of a group like Drexciya, with their fictional underwater Black society, devalues the calculated rawness of their transmissions. The aqueous and frenetic textures of their sound have not been replicated, but their ideas have been easily reproduced in award-winning novels like Rivers Solomon’s The Deep. Gerald Donald—one half of Drexciya, whose side projects bear Teutonic names like Der Zyklus—has specifically rejected vague connections to racial lineage.”
✘ A scathing piece, but my main takeaway is that we need better music critics and criticisms. In other words, we need more people to write about the actual nuts and bolts of music instead of vague assertions related to important but secondary things like album art.
🗺️ Mapping the rise of Bristol’s Avant Folk scene (Joseph Francis)
“So where does that leave the idea of folk art that Phillips was so hesitant to commit to? From Young Echo to Music To Come, these artists and institutions have resisted the post-underground hegemony by embracing values that are inherent to folk culture. The music is experimental, yes; but in Bristol, the end product of that experimentation has been unique to the area and, more importantly, its people. The music is so primal, so insular and so full of both traditional folk themes and avant-garde experimentation that it’s hard to deny the shared aesthetic between them all.”
✘ Having shared the above piece, I had to include some thoughtful criticism - this one about shared aesthetics, sonic textures, and the importance of place fits the bill.
🤖 One man’s army of streaming bots reveals a whole industry’s problem (Morgan Meaker)
“The man created software that played the music automatically, claims Maria Fredenslund, CEO of the Danish Rights Alliance, which protects copyright on the internet and first reported the case to the police. “So he didn't really listen to the music. No one really listened to the music.” According to the Danish Rights Alliance, the defendant had 69 accounts with music streaming services, including 20 with Spotify alone. Due to his network of accounts, he was at one point the 46th highest-earning musician in Denmark.”
✘ Keep an eye out for more and more news about streaming fraud this year. As the streaming economy plateaus, there are more incentives to squeeze behaviour like this out.
🛑 In Chechnya, the rhythm does indeed stop (Jess Weatherbed)
“The new tempo limitations are, amusingly, too fast for Russia’s own national anthem (which sits at 76bpm), while still being fairly slow by popular music standards. The high bpm rave and techno bops enjoyed in Western countries are clearly out, but this ban would even prevent people from listening to fairly somber tracks like Nirvana’s 120bpm hit “Come as You Are” — if the song wasn’t already restricted in the deeply conservative Russian republic.”
✘ Your first instinct here is perhaps to chuckle and read on, but as Richard Taruskin told us over two decades ago, we shouldn’t be so offhanded towards this. Instead, take this as an opportunity to think about how music can indeed inflict harm. And, think about how music creates a self and an other. Restricting access to the latter to preserve the former isn’t something that is limited to the non-Western spheres.
🏙️ Why brands should think like place-makers (Gemma Jones)
“Thinking about ‘place’ can help us update how brands understand their consumers and audiences, too. As cultural identities become increasingly shaped by diaspora experiences, culture drawn by national borders over-simplifies and fails to capture the diverse identities and tastes of contemporary audiences. Places and their neighbourhoods have a beautiful way of encompassing different temporalities — heritage coexists with the future and both leave their mark on the present.”
✘ I highly encourage this type of thinking. There’s a lot we can learn from urban theory and thinking when it comes to online expressions and strategies.
MUSIC
If ever there was a collaboration that got me excited it’s this one. Shabaka and Moses Sumney together on a track - part of Shabaka’s excellent new album. It’s called Insecurities and the music and Moses’ voice reflect that title. It’s full of little flutters where I feel the intensity of being vulnerable. The production helps here as well, creating a sense of uncomfortableness that is shrouded in sonic layers of protection.