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Artist Interview

Ai Kittens showed us the future of neural network music ahead of his AI-generated album using Blink-182’s discography database.

Posted on 12 November 2022

Here to prove that Ai in the music industry doesn’t equate to the redundancy of human creativity, Ai Kittens gave us a view into the process of creating neural network music based on the discography databases of iconic artists. He’s rewired the sounds of everyone from RHCP to the Weeknd, and on November 18th, he’s unleashing his next album. Blink-182 fans might want to pay attention.

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Ai Kittens, welcome back to A&R Factory! We loved getting stuck into your album arranged from Rage Against the Machine’s music last year; plenty of other people have, judging by your streaming stats! Clearly, there is an appetite for tech-driven original reformations of iconic music; would you say this is the future of music?

Undoubtedly, such tools will be available to more and more creative people every year, including well-known artists. Probably even now such tools are used in creative camps, but we don’t know about it. Some attempts are made by guys from Bored Apes, but there it seems AI art is just a cover to sell to a label. With my works, I want to show that by using neural networks everyone can be a creator and producer.

I would also like to point out that neural networks are an endless source of inspiration for the artist, the only question is if you can make maximum use of it.

You prepared 260 songs, and only 15 made the cut for the album; do you think the LP format is outdated in the age of AI music?

In fact, in order to get 260 tracks, 3,600 tracks were generated, from which I made this sample.

In my opinion, listening behavior doesn’t change much, and of course, no one will listen to all 200 songs because that is almost 5 hours and 30 minutes of music with no repetition. This music will have some kind of development; for example, it is possible to make an album with lyrics for a real band and perform it all at concerts. Of course, my dream would be if Blink182 would use it. But I spent that summer and part of the fall in LA and couldn’t meet the guys in the band.

It changes the approach to how the album is made, and how the hit song is searched for because you can listen to it before you do something yourself. You just have to listen to it and conclude whether you like the track.

Can you run us through the process of authentically arranging music via AI and what tools you use to create music from artist databases?

I use the Open Ai Jukebox neural network. Unfortunately, the company stopped further development because they found more profitable solutions with images. A server with video cards and the right settings is enough to get results. For the generation, I used two genres and text; the genre gene is punk, the artist gene is Blink 182, and I used four texts to randomize the results. I have 1 million 200 thousand songs of different genres and artists.

As a result, I get, with some probability, tracks that sound like I overheard them at a band rehearsal and recorded them on a tape recorder. And then the musician just plays that recording back at a rate of about 5 songs a day. So it only took us two months to do all 260 tracks.

If I worked with a real band, I think getting that many demos in that amount of time would be fantastic.
All that remains is to write the lyrics and sing them. (Although I have a separate project called Ai Lyrics for that). With him, I’ve already written about 50 pop songs in the style of Bruno Mars and Weeknd. You should also try to generate some lyrics in the style of your favorite artists. It’s a lot of fun.

What made you choose the Blink 182 back catalogue to generate an album from?

Last year I saw a newsletter from Kobalt, a music publisher where artists of all different levels submit requests to find songs for themselves; there I saw a request from Blink182. They were looking for a song with a different intro than their regular songs.

I decided to generate those songs for them. After I got the first generations, I wrote to Kobalt music, but no one answered me further than the secretary. I went to their office in L.A., but they kicked me out of there like I was crazy. Then I tried to meet John Feldman to show them the song demos, but that too ended in failure.

Blink182 is a great love from my childhood. It’s music I listened to as a teenager. Why not make more music like this if the musicians don’t make it themselves? But while I was putting it all together, the band was already going on a stadium tour in 2023. And they even seem to be alive and showing some activity.

What would you say to the AI sceptics who believe that embracing AI will make human creativity redundant?

AI will not replace humans. It will always be only a support for humans in the search for inspiration, to reduce the creative routine. After all, a living person needs money, a machine does not.

What can we expect from Ai Kittens next?

Next Friday, the blink182 album will drop. I’m trying to publish music every Friday; I have so many songs to release. You have no idea how much I want to show you what I have for Bruno Mars and the Weeknd.

But it’s so hard to communicate with them. I can’t catch Anderson Paak in LA in the next 2 months, but I caught him in Bali last week. Hope he will listen to my neuro stuff and maybe it will be the basis for the next 5 platinum albums…

Listen to Ai Kittens on Spotify. Follow his innovative career on Instagram.

Interview by Amelia Vandergast

Interview: Poseidon’s Alley led us through the ingenuity in his sophomore album, Blackberries, which unravels as a nostalgically juiced amalgam of prog-rock, synthwave and jazz

Posted on 3 November 2022

After pouring jazzy synthwave tones served with a slice of prog-rock panache in our ears with his sophomore album, Blackberries, the classically-trained LA-based artist, Poseidon’s Alley spilt his genre-melding secrets.

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Poseidon’s Alley, welcome to A&R Factory! Can you tell us a little about your sophomore album, Blackberries?

“Thanks! Blackberries is an album that I would describe as genre-bending, groove-based instrumental music. It’s my second LP under the “Poseidon’s Alley” moniker, and I think personally it’s a big step up both production and composition-wise. Unlike my debut album — which I think sounds a little bit more eclectic, abstract, and overall happier — Blackberries is pretty moody throughout and tries to paint these dark, synth-y soundscapes layered with dreamy guitar lines that feel nostalgic, wistful, and even melodramatic at times.

I worked on the album on and off from 2018 to 2022, a period of time that obviously includes the pandemic as well as some personal loss that I went through. So, not the easiest of times for me, or most people, and I think you’ll hear that reflected pretty well through these mostly minor key vibes happening on the record. In fact, I actually let the album sit 85% finished without touching anything for over a year, before finally pulling myself out of the mire and finishing what I started. I called the album Blackberries in a little nod to the Pacific Northwest where they grow (and I live), as sort of a personal “silver lining” metaphor — that these thorny, painful plants still ultimately produce something sweet.”

It’s quite the melting pot of genres; was this something that happened naturally?

“Yes — my compositional style, I would probably compare to abstract painting. Other than the mood I’m in when I start a piece, I don’t really push myself consciously in any direction — I just go where my ear takes me. I actually kind of wish my music wasn’t quite so hard to pin down, because it makes it incredibly difficult to fit yourself in these narrow boxes that the big Spotify playlists kinda require you to be in. First of all, I make instrumental music, which is already sort of disqualifying yourself for a lot of listeners. Besides not having vocals, I’m too synthwave for the prog-style playlists, too guitar-forward for the synthwave playlists, and too complex for some of the lo-fi or indietronica playlists.

But at the end of the day, I’m going to follow the classic Rick Rubin advice and just make the music that I want to hear, rather than artificially trying to stick to a style just to more easily find an audience. And when people do click with Poseidon’s Alley — which, when they do, is thanks in large part to several smaller playlist curators who have found and generously featured me — the response I’ve gotten has been really encouraging to just be myself.”

The spacey amalgam of prog, synthwave and jazz is definitely something we have never heard before; what inspired the album?

“It’s a pure, subconscious reflection of the music that has inspired and impacted me the most in my life. Until my late 20s, I really mostly listened to (and played) guitar-centric prog rock. As a music student and professor, I’ve naturally gone quite deep into classical and jazz for years at a time. That background really forms the basis of the way I approach musical structure, which is classical, and the way I hear and think about harmony, which is jazz. And in the last few years, synthwave, chillwave, vaporwave, all of that stuff really scratched this strong nostalgic itch I have for the 80s and early 90s, and the vibes of the world during my early childhood.

Anyway, I think on most of the songs on Blackberries, the influences are pretty evenly blended. But you also have tracks like “Farewell, August Macke” which is like an “Alfa Mist meets Men I Trust”-inspired jazz tune. You can really hear the Dream Theater-esque prog rock influence on “Gatsby’s Green Light” and “Object Permanence” at the end of the album. And I think “Knight of the Mirrors” and “Rosa Californica” are the two biggest love letters to the retrowave artists that inspire me like Lazerhawk, A.L.I.S.O.N., Lucy in Disguise, and Eagle Eyed Tiger.”

How did your classical training interplay with writing Blackberries and bringing it to life?

“My classical training was the best thing that ever happened to me as a musician just in general because it gave me the context and tools to understand what I’m doing harmonically and melodically instead of just fumbling around in the dark hoping to get lucky. I’m biased as a music educator, but I strongly feel that internalized knowledge of music theory just opens up these amazing worlds of possibilities for a composer, and helps to push and evolve your ear in ways that make music more rich and exciting.

My classical training started with my amazing guitar teacher Rick Sailon who gave me a head start as a teenager, continued at Los Angeles Valley College and Cal State University Northridge, and finished after grad school at the University of Southern California. Once you’ve gone through that many years of thinking about music through this theory-based framework, it’s kind of impossible to turn it off. But I wouldn’t want to!”

Who was involved in the making of your new album?

“I wrote, played, and mixed everything on the album. My incredibly talented fiancée Monica does all the album artwork for Poseidon’s Alley. And it was mastered by Elliot James Mulhern who’s an audio legend in LA.”

You’re a part-time music professor too; what do you think your students would have to say about the release?

“That’s a great question — they’re usually surprised that someone who spends most of his time talking about Beethoven, Bach, and Charlie Parker creates music like this in his spare time, and not, like, string quartets or something. To my beloved students, all I can say is: smash that like and follow button for the Spotify algorithm!”

Are there any future releases in the pipeline?

“This definitely won’t be the last Poseidon’s Alley album. I feel my ability as a composer and recording engineer are getting stronger with every song I work on, and I’m excited to keep building on that. After the darkness explored on Blackberries, I wouldn’t be surprised if the next album is quite a bit lighter. I’m super inspired by the music I’ve been listening to lately including Khruangbin, Her’s, Men I Trust, Hello Meteor, and Pacific Coliseum. So, I wouldn’t be surprised to hear those influences reflected back on the next LP! But yeah, my focus for the next few months is on trying to support Blackberries and get it into the ears of people who would dig this kind of music, but maybe don’t know it exists yet.”

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Check out Poseidon’s Alley on Spotify, Instagram and his official website.

Interview by Amelia Vandergast

Lewis & Ford Interview: The Last of the Psych Pop Dreamers Dug into their Reggae Dubbed Blisters of Euphonic Bliss to Reveal Even More Soul

Posted on 29 October 2022

From good vibes to groove reggae to discussing their 9 musical lives, A&R Factory sat down with Damien Lewis & Caleb Ford from the psychedelic dream of a duo, Lewis & Ford, ahead of the release of their new single, Secret Beach. We thought we loved the music before getting to the sanctifying gist of it. Now we’re head over heels in those psych-pop soundscapes.

What can we expect from your fifth single, Secret Beach?

Caleb: Secret Beach is an ethereal track that is aimed at transporting the listener to another sonic dimension. In the song, the ‘Secret Beach’ is not a place, so much as a state of mind: a place you can go in your mind to get away from all of the stresses and worries of life. We all need that from time to time in this crazy world! Musically it incorporates some of the palettes that we often like to paint with: groovy reggae drum and bass lines, soothing and soaring melodies, and reverb-laden guitar and dreamy synth pads.

Damien: Secret Beach continues the evolution of our sound drawing on our psychedelic pop landscapes and roots in reggae music, we were the founding member of the roots reggae band Revelation in the 2000s

Is there anything that remains a constant through your singles?

Caleb: In the area of lyrics, we aim to tell a story in an eloquent way that leaves the meaning up for various interpretations. We try to stay away from themes and lines that are “too on the nose,” and, rather, say something in a poetic way that sparks the listener’s imagination. Sonically, our music is typically a product of our musical upbringings and tastes. Elements of psychedelic rock, dub reggae, and dream pop often make their way into our tracks, but usually in an organic way. We never try to force anything, and we try to let the songs develop naturally, and keep an open mind to what each composition needs.

Damien: Our aesthetic is very important to us, both as artists and also in how the public views the group. While we do not ever limit ourselves and pour anything into a mold we do have a sound and use certain instruments and production techniques that are part of our DNA. As artists capable of, and having creating music of any genre it’s important for us that the catalog feels fresh with every single yet not random. We don’t make music for anyone but ourselves or to appease any suits. It feels 100% authentic to us at the end of the day.

You’ve both spent a decade touring, writing, and producing material for other artists; what was behind your motivation to embark on your own project?

Caleb: All of the experiences that we have had working on other people’s projects have been incredibly instructive and have contributed to the musicians that we have become. However, we never stopped hearing the call in the back of our minds to make our own music and let our unique voices be heard. Damien has worked with some of the biggest names in pop music and has been nominated for Grammy awards as an audio engineer. This experience has given him a skill set that enables us to take our productions to a level we never would have dreamed of twenty years ago when we first started writing and recording. As for myself, my time away from music earning a PhD in history afforded me many opportunities for travel and intellectual opportunities that have helped me to come back to music with a fresh perspective. In a big way, our life experiences contribute to who we become as people, and our respective experiences over the past decade or two I think really contribute to giving us a unique musical and lyrical voice.

Damien: Well, really we started with our own project in high school. We had a blues band and played every week at a bar in Detroit. Upon graduating we became sidemen for hire in other people’s bands and started working in the studio. We also had a home studio before it was cool around 2003. Eventually, the overwhelming urge to do your own thing takes over as I’m sure everyone can relate to in any industry.

Amalgams of dream pop, psych and American roots can’t be easy to pull off. What’s your creative process like?

Caleb: There is no one right way to write a song. Sometimes it starts with a single lyric or thematic idea, and sometimes it starts with a guitar riff or drum beat. However, one constant in our songwriting process is that we trust each other’s instincts, and are always willing to let the other person try things out, and take the lead if we think they are onto something. The other side of that is that we are willing to accept that sometimes certain things that we thought could work (like a particular lyrical idea, or a bridge, or hook, etc.) don’t end up being right for a particular song. So, you have to throw away your egos, and always be open to what the song needs. Another factor for us is that we are big believers in the idea that different places and environments can spark musical creativity. Because of this, we usually avoid writing and recording in typical recording studio spaces. A lot of our music has been written and recorded in the high desert near Joshua Tree in Southern California, but we have also written songs in historic buildings in our hometown of Detroit, MI, and in the basements of friends in Jamaica Queens. Every place has its own vibe that can influence and inspire the songwriting process.

Damien: We like to think our sound is unique and we certainly don’t model it after anything, it is quite literally a reflection of our musical past and influences. If one was to dig hard enough, you could find inspiration from all of our favorite records from our life in subliminal ways. We have a certain palette of instruments and processing that we use that we consider the colors we paint with. Sometimes we have words or concepts first, sometimes we build the music first and then write the chorus. We find inspiration in writing in unique environments and surroundings. Many of our new songs were written and recorded from random Air BnBs in the southern California deserts.

Sonic good vibes are scarcely so visceral; what’s your secret?

Caleb: I think the sonic vibrations of our music are really a combination of many factors: our experiences as musicians and people, our respective skill sets, and a combination of our musical influences (everything from reggae, psych rock, classic soul and r&b, gospel, surf rock, and even classic country). We try to take the best from all of those influences and fuse them into our compositions in a natural and organic way. But, again, it is never forced. That’s just the music that comes out of our hearts and imaginations.

Damien: 20 years of writing and producing records, thousands of live shows from 12 to 12,000 people lol. We’ve had 9 lives musically from blues, reggae, funk and pop. Lewis & Ford feels like our most authentic selves right now. We draw upon our life experiences but we are never afraid to push ourselves into new spaces. At the end of the day, the song has to be amazing, that’s the secret really, it’s in the writing. It’s easy to make things sound cool now but can you write a great song and a great hook? That’s the secret sauce we spread around.

As songwriting partners, how would you say your styles complement each other?

Caleb: We grew up with a lot of the same influences (Motown, ‘60s and ‘70s rock, reggae, etc.), so we come from a very similar place and share a lot of the same musical tastes. That makes working together a natural and easy process. I think the other aspect is that we have different strengths that compliment each other well. Damien is a wizard when it comes to production, and has a knack for knowing just what a song needs when it comes to textures and ear candy. He is also a gifted and clever lyricist, with a keen ear for melody and harmony. Also, because drums were his main instrument for a long time, he has a great sense for finding the perfect grooves and rhythms to propel a song forward. On my end, I just try to sing and play guitar (and sometimes keys) in a way that makes a song interesting and pulls the listener in. I also love harmonies (which I think comes from both my gospel upbringing and my love of the Beach Boys, Beatles, Pink Floyd, and other groups that utilized harmonies in an evocative and moving way). Lyrically, I am influenced as much by nineteenth-century English romantic poets as I am by modern raconteurs like Dylan, Lennon, and Marley.

Damien: That’s one of our biggest strengths. Between the two of us, we can play every instrument (which we do on every record) we don’t really use any outside musicians. Our long relationship as friends allows us to tap into a kind of subliminal communication. We also don’t approach any idea or performance be it good or bad with any ego or judgement. We are good at respectfully pushing each other to get the best out of ourselves. Making music together is effortless and fun, we walk away from every session with something good.

(here’s to hoping) Is there a debut album in the pipeline?

Caleb: There absolutely is a debut album in the pipeline. I think we are aiming for the summer of 2023 for that, so stay tuned!

Damien: Yes we have a lot more music on the way, we plan on releasing a steady stream of singles, the next 3 are already lined up. Then we will most likely package everything together with some new material. It’s a singles world once again and we actually prefer it that way.

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Listen to Lewis & Ford on Spotify. Connect with them via Facebook and Instagram. 

Interview by Amelia Vandergast