Damien Roach, composer, designer and researcher at the University of the Arts in London, has been integrating artificial intelligence (AI) into his artistic practice for several years. However, it was the discovery of a new tool called Riffusion that inspired Mirage FM, billed as the first album crafted from AI-generated audio sources via text command — type in your idea, say Martian polka, and listen to what Riffusion suggests. Roach recorded the results of his queries, which he then edited, modified and assembled to create this mix tape of about twenty vignettes where soft rock (The Door) dissolves into ambient music (Lightspeed), between two attempts at R&B or incomprehensible grime (Walk With U). Roach makes music based on sound samples, but machine-generated samples; the concept trumps the result here, Mirage FM offering a disarticulated and strangely disembodied musical experience, particularly when the human voice is reproduced by AI.
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