The visitors receded as Chicago withdrew into the space behind me on Interstate 90. Barns and timber dotted the horizon. The audio system in my rental automotive, taking part in Spotify from my smartphone, put out the opening riff of a laid-back psychedelic-rock track. When the lyrics got here, delivered in a folksy vibrato, they matched my temper: “Smoke within the sky / No peace discovered,” the band’s vocalist sang.
Besides maybe he didn’t actually sing, as a result of he doesn’t exist. By all appearancesneither does the band, referred to as the Velvet Sunset. Its music, lyrics, and album artwork could also be AI innovations. Similar goes for the images of the band. Social-media accounts related to the band have been coy on the topic: “They stated we’re not actual. Possibly you aren’t both,” one Velvet Sunset submit declares. (That account didn’t reply to a request for remark by way of direct message.) No matter its provenance, the Velvet Sunset appears to be profitable: It launched two albums final month alone, with a 3rd on its means. And with greater than 850,000 month-to-month listeners on Spotify, its attain exceeds that of the late-’80s MTV staple Martika or the hard-bop jazz saxophonist Cannonball Adderley. As for the music: You realize, it’s not unhealthy.
It’s not good both. It’s extra like nothing—not good or unhealthy, aesthetically or morally. Having listened to each of the Velvet Sunset’s albums as I drove from Chicago to Madison, Wisconsin, earlier this week, I found that what might now be essentially the most profitable AI group on Spotify is merely, profoundly, and disturbingly innocuous. In that sense, it signifies the destiny of music that’s streamed on-line after which imbibed whereas one drives, cooks, cleans, works, workouts, or does another prosaic act. Lengthy earlier than generative AI started its takeover of the web, streaming music had turned anodyne—a automobile for vibes, not for lively listening. A single highway journey with the Velvet Sunset was sufficient to show this level: A serious subset of the music that we take heed to right now may as nicely have been made by a machine.
The technical quilt that was vital to supply an AI album has been assembling for a while. Massive language fashions resembling ChatGPT can produce believable track lyrics, liner notes, and different textual materials. Software program resembling Suno can, based mostly on textual content prompts, create songs with each instrumentation and vocals. Picture mills might be directed to create illustrated compositions for album artwork and life like pictures of a band and its members, after which preserve the looks of these folks throughout a number of pictures. Once I received to Madison, I signed up for Suno’s service. Mere moments later, I had created my very own psychedelic-rock, road-trip-themed jam, a bit extra amplified and fewer sitar-adjacent than the Velvet Sunset’s. I didn’t even have to call the observe; Suno dubbed it “Countless Freeway” on my behalf. “Rubber burns, the map fades away / Chasing the ghosts of yesterday,” its faux male vocalist intoned. Certain, wonderful.
However cultural circumstances have additionally made AI music tolerable, and even welcome to some listeners. On the flip of the century, Napster made digital music free, and the iPod made it professional. You might carry a complete document retailer in your pocket. Quickly after, Spotify, which turned the largest music-streaming service, began curating after which algorithmically producing playlists, which gave listeners suggestions for brand spanking new music and supplied simple clicks into hours of sound in any subgenre, actual or invented—acid jazz, vacation bossa nova, no matter. Even simply the phrase lazy Sunday may very well be changed into a playlist. So may garden mowing or baking. No matter Spotify put into your queue was ok, since you may all the time skip forward or plug in a brand new immediate.
Actual or not, the Velvet Sunset feels extra like a playlist than a band. Its “Verified Artist” description on Spotify used to learn, “Their sound mixes textures of ’70s psychedelic alt-rock and people rock, but it blends effortlessly with trendy alt-pop and indie constructions.” That meeting of influences, stretching throughout half a century, seems with better and lesser prevalence in every of the band’s numbers. “Because the Silence Falls” feels indie people, with washed-out guitars and gentle vocals; “Smoke and Silence” is extra bluesy, with stronger vocals and a classic-rock really feel. From observe to trace, the singer’s voice appears to vary in tone too—maybe a quirk of generativity—making the gathering really feel much less like a purposeful LP and extra like a blind-bag gamble.
Music used to outline somebody’s identification: punk, rock, nation, different, and so forth. Asking “What music do you want?” may elicit an individual’s style, values, and style sense. The rockers may hang around behind the gymnasium and smoke cigarettes; they had been a clique identical to the jocks and the nerds. Discovering, becoming a member of, and deepening a connection to a music subculture required effort; you needed to discover the appropriate venues, information, zines, or crowd. In that period, music was tribal. A relationship with the Sisters of Mercy, Weapons N’ Roses, or Bauhaus represented a dedication.
Not a lot right now. The web has fragmented and flattened subcultures. The Velvet Sunset’s puppeteers current the band’s gentle pastiche of genres—psychedelic, people, indie—as refined fusion, however after all it’s nothing greater than a careless smear of stylistic averages. Psychedelic, people, and indie rock every in their very own means have one thing to say, musically and lyrically—about musical conference, spirituality, introspection, or social and political circumstances. The Velvet Sunset doesn’t appear to care about any of these issues.
This strategy seems to be serving the band or its creators very nicely. The Velvet Sunset may very well enchantment to folks. None of its tracks go exhausting; as a substitute, every one gives one thing barely completely different—a sitar lick, a blues-guitar solo, a folk-adjacent nation twang—that may show palatable to any given listener. Maybe no human artist may tolerate producing such soulless lackluster, however an AI is unburdened by disgrace.
The lyrics’ milquetoast moodiness may additionally contribute to the band’s listener numbers. Every line is brief, and the phrases barely join to 1 one other, making it simple for listeners to listen to no matter they could need to hear: “Mud on the wind / Boots on the bottom / Smoke within the sky / No peace discovered.” Actually makes you assume, till you understand that, no, it doesn’t in any respect. The place the music engages with the political commitments that usually characterize its influences, it does so in a means that might imply something. Take the refrain of “Finish the Ache,” one of many band’s prime songs on Spotify. Singing with folk-rock urgency, the alleged “frontman and mellowtron sorcerer” Gabe Farrow pleads, “No extra weapons, no extra graves / Ship no heroes, simply the courageous.” These phrases convey the sensibility of an anti-war anthem, however they provide so little element that the track may adequately service supporters or detractors of any battle, previous or current.
Nameless and delicate sensibilities have forex as a result of right now’s music—whether or not created and curated by people or machines—is so typically used to make folks really feel nothing as a substitute of one thing. In open-plan places of work, folks began donning headphones to realize some semblance of privateness. At residence, they do the identical to masks the sound of visitors or their roommates’ Zoom calls. Web-connected, whole-house audio techniques can flip any room right into a souped-up, algorithmic white-noise machine that appears like Italo disco or chillhop in the way in which that LaCroix tastes like lime. The music that’s greatest tailored for these settings is that which descends from what Brian Eno dubbed, on his 1979 album, Music for Airports“ambient.” This music isn’t meant to be listened to straight; it’s used to drown out the whole lot else.
As I drove amid the cornfields on I-90, the Velvet Sunset did simply that. The band’s tracks weren’t satisfying in any means, however they had been apt. I used to be on the highway, however I may very well be wherever—awaiting a Pilates class, paying for deli meat, scrolling by way of web memes—and the sound would hit the mark.
And the worst half was that it was wonderful. It was wonderful! To my nice embarrassment, the Velvet Sunset’s songs even managed to worm their means into my mind. Did I like their music? No, however my aesthetic judgment had given over to its vibesthat modern euphemism for ultra-processed environment.
How far may I push this sense? Returning to the automotive after a refreshment cease, I attempted to make Spotify go meta on the band: I requested the app to generate a playlist made out of songs which might be just like the Velvet Sunset’s. An inventory appeared of bands I didn’t acknowledge. Many appeared a little bit off: Appalachian White Lightning and Flaherty Brotherhood gave the impression of they could be AI acts as nicely. (Somewhat Googling revealed that others suspect the identical.) I suppose this is smart; I used to be asking the algorithm to provide me a channel of sanitized, inauthentic-seeming psychedelic-folk-indie rock, and it delivered. I contemplated for a second whether or not any of the opposite artists on my customized playlist (the South Carolina folk-rock singer-songwriter Johnny Delaware? The Belgian folk-pop quartet Lemon Straw?) could be faux—and the way one may attempt to suss that out.
The query felt exhausting, so I switched again to the Velvet Sunset. As I drove and the music performed, I felt nothing—however I felt that nothing with rising acuteness. I used to be neither moved nor unhappy nor pensive, simply conscious of the truth that my physique and thoughts exist in a tenuous zizz someplace between life, loss of life, and computer systems. That is second-order music listening, wherein you expertise the concept of listening to music. What higher band to offer that service than one which doesn’t even exist?
However wanting towards the blushing sky forward of me, I noticed that I didn’t even need this music to be artwork, or to really feel that I used to be communing with its makers. I merely hoped to assume and really feel as little as potential whereas piloting my large automotive by way of the empty night of America. This music—maybe most music now—isn’t for dancing and even for airports; it’s for the void. I pressed play and gripped the wheel and accelerated again onto the tollway, because the machines lulled me into oblivion.
