NOT ALL NEW DAWNS ARE GLORIOUS

Very pleased to say we’ve managed to put together another short run of UK shows in September to play our recent Water Scores record with Lauren Mason in full. Details for all that are below. The shows in March were really great and we’re all stoked to be able to do this again. To end the tour we decided to book a fancy pants venue in Salford (The Sacred Trinity Church) where we’re gonna cook up some extra cool visuals and make it a bit (hopefully!) special. Head over here for tickets.

In all honesty it’s been a slightly quieter past few months here at HQ, sometimes these phases present themselves and they can be a really useful time to slow down a bit (I am BAD at this) but more importantly I see these little periods as a chance to dig for new inspiration and ideas… there’s a bit more head space than usual and I find that just allows new and exciting and cool things to land in there. More reading, more films, more listening, more wandering.

If you are a guitar pedal nerd like me then you might be aware of JHS pedals (if you are not aware this next bit still applies). The other day I watched one of their recent videos on the ‘tube about ‘AI Slop’ - god damn it was harrowing. The basis of it was around the guitar pedal industry and a general slap down of independent/boutique/innovative companies for being overpriced. The JHS guys naturally destroy the content in the video as being horrendous misinformation with glaring errors left, right and centre (which they point out in varying degrees of hilarity and horror). However, the most troubling part of this AI generated video was the overriding message it seemed to be conveying… that there is zero value in supporting small, independent businesses, human processes for figuring things out and building stuff with our brains and hands.

The key people behind the rise of AI occasionally give us an insight into how they perceive the world and surely this is reflected in the world they seek to create with AI. For instance, Mikey Shulman, the CEO of AI music program Suno AI said recently; “It’s not really enjoyable to make music now […] It takes a lot of time, it takes a lot of practice, you need to get really good at an instrument or really good at a piece of production software. I think the majority of people don’t enjoy the majority of the time they spend making music.”

I’ll leave that wildness to fester with you for a while and if you want to watch the JHS video you can find it here.

I can’t remember if I shared this at the time but here’s a recent podcast interview I did with the great guys at Northwest Connection.

Thanks for reading and be well….
Richard

PS - here’s a very cool Lou Reed interview about Metal Machine Music from 2007.