First Floor #210 – Everybody Wants to Be an Artist, Nobody Wants to Pay for Art
a.k.a. Thoughts on AI, streaming and where the music industry is headed, plus a round-up of the latest electronic music news and a fresh slate of new track recommendations.
I’m not an AI doomer. More generally, I’m not a tech doomer. Maybe that’s because I grew up in Silicon Valley, but I’d like to think it’s because I know that disruptive technologies have been greeted with anger, panic and fear since long before I was born. And I get it! I’m not a tech enthusiast either, and if you’re a creative person of any kind, it’s easy to see something like generative AI and think, “This is the end of my art / practice / career.” And, honestly, it might be. Cameras, copy machines, synthesizers, drum machines, digital production software…. these things all put certain people out of work. There are winners and losers anytime something new comes along, but in the grand scheme of things, humans haven’t yet managed to kill art and creativity, and I do take some solace in that.
Even so, it is difficult to keep my composure when I see how AI proponents—and, frankly, the tech industry in general—talk about art and artistry. (Truth be told, the way the general public talks about these topics is only marginally better.) There’s an alarming tendency to casually dismiss artists’ concerns, and a weird confidence among tech developers that they know best what forms art and creativity should take in the future, despite the fact that many of them have little to no experience in actual artistic and creative communities.
Bringing that gap is difficult, and doubly so when the tech industry has pretty much all of the money and most of the power. It’s strange to live in a time where seemingly everyone wants to be an artist—and entire industries have sprung up to cater to that desire—yet there’s almost zero collective concern for those who are already making a living (or trying to) in creative fields. That basic conflict is at the core of an essay I published earlier this week, which you can find below. (And yes, the paywall on it is temporarily down.)
Otherwise, today’s First Floor digest has a robust round-up of what’s been happening in the electronic music world. You’ll find news items, new release announcements and links to assorted articles and podcasts, plus I’ve assembled a list of new track recommendations, all of them from releases that dropped during the past week. And just in case you’d like to hear from someone who isn’t me, I’ve also enlisted fellow electronic music journalist Michael McKinney—who’s been doing some admirable work at Passion of the Weiss lately—to pop in with a guest recommendation of his own.
Let’s get started.
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT:
Every Tuesday, First Floor publishes a long-form piece that’s exclusively made available to paid newsletter subscribers only. The latest one, which is now (temporarily) open to everyone, is an essay examining how the music and tech industries are increasingly oriented toward encouraging and enabling the average person’s desire to be an artist. At the same time, those same industries seem to be actively undercutting existing artists’ ability to realistically earn a living, or even build a reliable audience. What’s happening is both contradictory and unsustainable, which of course is a perfect encapsulation of the present cultural moment.
OTHER THINGS I DID / AM DOING
Last weekend, I took part in a live online chat with writer Tamara Palmer as part of her Music Book Club conversation series. We talked about my book, First Floor Vol. 1: Reflections on Electronic Music Culture, but also nerded out over our shared history in Bay Area radio and discussed the current state of music journalism. If you weren’t able to tune in, a video of our conversation has been archived here by San Francisco news / culture publication 48 Hills.
Next week, I’ll be heading to Brussels for this year’s Listen Festival, where I’ll be taking part in a conversation called Our Scene – Reflections on Electronic Music Culture. Moderating the talk is Richard Akingbehin, co-founder of Berlin radio station Refuge Worldwide, and while he’ll be asking me about my work with First Floor, we’ll also be discussing the present state of electronic music. This free event is taking place on Thursday, March 28, and anyone interested in attending can register for a ticket here.
REAL QUICK
A round-up of the last week’s most interesting electronic music news, plus links to interviews, articles and other things I think are worth sharing.
Less than three weeks after James Blake went online to air his concerns about the many ways streaming and social media were negatively impacting artists and the music industry, he yesterday announced that he’d joined up with a new platform, Vault, which he sees as something that can potentially improve the situation. The idea is that artists upload their music to Vault, ideally offering exclusives and unreleased tunes that aren’t available elsewhere, and fans pay a monthly subscription for access. (There also appears to be some sort of chat / direct messaging functionality, and artists on Vault also get to keep all of their subscriber data, which does not happen on streaming platforms.) The response on social media so far has been… mixed (at best), with many critics and proponents pointing out that Vault looks a lot like Patreon, Substack and other subscription-based platforms. As of now, Blake is the only artist whose music is publicly available through Vault, but those interested in joining him on the platform can apply via the company’s website.
Another bit of streaming-related news that surfaced this week is simultaneously both humorous and rather depressing. Music Business Worldwide published an article—which, in truth, is almost entirely based on a story by Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter—about a composer named Johan Röhr, whose music has incredibly been released under “50 composer aliases and at least 656 invented artist names.” In total, his songs have been streamed on Spotify approximately 15 billion times, making him one of the Top 100 artists on the platform of all time. The whole situation seems absolutely ludicrous, but it shines a light on just how widespread the streaming landscape’s “fake artists” problem has become.
The No Tags podcast is only a few months old, but it’s already proven to be a welcome source of fantastic conversations about electronic and independent music culture. The latest episode was particularly good, as it featured Robin James, a writer, editor and academic who focuses on media, music and sound studies, and is currently writing a book about the notion of vibes and their growing influence in the culture. Her appearance on No Tags covers a lot of ground, and she has a real knack for incisively looking at the music industry (and the world in general) in a zoomed-out, systemic way. Her assertion that modern-day capitalism is looking to “monetize counterfactual realities” broke my brain (in a good way), and the whole episode is stuffed with similarly thought-provoking gems.
It seems that the Brazilian funk (also known as baile funk, but only outside of Brazil) hype train has officially left the station, and while it remains to be seen whether the genre will ultimately be regarded as more than just a passing fad, it’s worth enjoying the present moment, as some pieces of quality, informative English-language writing about the music / culture are starting to emerge. For Crack magazine, Brazilian writer GG Albuquerque put together a feature on funk mineiro, a uniquely minimal, drill- and trap-influenced variant of the genre coming out of the city of Belo Horizonte. (Queridão, the recent album from DJ Anderson do Paraíso, is a prime example.) And for those wanting a more comprehensive look at the nationwide scene, writer Bill Differen independently spent months putting together an irreverent, yet meticulously annotated round-up of his Top 100 Brazilian funk tracks from 2023. Highlighting countless artists, scenes, sounds, trends and microtrends that most people outside Brazil have never heard of, it’s a pretty fantastic starting point for anyone curious to know more about the funk genre.
In a year when music journalism has been faced with even more upheaval than usual, steady jobs have become exceedingly rare, but Discogs is currently looking to hire a new Music Editorial Lead who can “transform how music collecting fans discover and cherish their favorite record.” More information on the position, which is remote and open to candidates located in Oregon, California, Colorado, Texas and Illinois, can be found here.
Longtime First Floor readers already know that metadata—or, more specifically, that fact that it’s often missing or incomplete—is one of my pet issues. A new free online tool called Disconest won’t completely resolve the problem—vinyl collectors / buyers / users are the most likely to benefit—but it has been designed to quickly provide “key, tempo and other musical metadata” for any release that’s listed on Discogs.
OBLIGATORY BOOK MENTION
My first book is out now. It’s called First Floor Vol. 1: Reflections on Electronic Music Culture, and you can order it from my publisher Velocity Press. However, if you’re outside of the UK, I’d actually recommend either inquiring at your favorite local bookshop or trying one of the online sales links I’ve compiled here.
JUST ANNOUNCED
A round-up of noteworthy new and upcoming releases announced during the past week.
Best known for his ambient outings on labels like 3XL, Balmat, Quiet Time and Good Morning Tapes, Barcelona-based producer Nueen has teamed up with Manchester rapper / vocalist Iceboy Violet, and the album they made together, You Said You'd Hold My Hand Through the Fire, is set to be released by Hyperdub. Before it arrives on June 7, the duo have already shared a first single, “Closer.”
Adding to his catalog of HBO soundtracks, Nathan Micay last year composed the music for an original film called Reality. Yesterday that soundtrack was officially released via the LuckyMe label, just one day after the Canadian producer appeared as a guest on the latest episode of Scuba’s Not a Diving Podcast.
Priori has a new album on the way. Scheduled for a May 24 release on the naff label he runs alongside fellow Montreal artist Adam Feingold, the upcoming This but More includes guest appearances by Feingold, James K, Ben Bondy and Sabola, and is billed as a “sonic departure” from Priori’s previous work. To give listeners a taste of what’s in store, he already released two tracks from the record, “Learn to Fly” and “Segue,” which are both available here.
B.D.B. is a collaboration between Benjamin Damage and Bicep, and last week the trio released a new single on the latter’s CHROMA imprint. “L.A.V.A” is said to be the first of several B.D.B. tracks that will surface this year, and it’s available now.
Lanark Artefax is back. Five years removed from his last release, the reclusive Scottish producer has completed a new EP, Metallur, that the AD 93 label will be issuing on April 26. In the meantime, the record’s title track has already been shared.
Writing for Pitchfork yesterday, journalist Shaad D’Souza very accurately summarized Two Shell’s recent activity as “too many hijinks, not enough CHUNES,” but it is nonetheless noteworthy that the mischievous UK duo has joined forces with FKA Twigs on a new single for Young. Entitled “Talk to Me,” it’s available now, as are the group’s previously issued versions of the song, which they voiced with AI versions of Frank Ocean, Taylor Swift, Pink Pantheress and Chris Martin.
Cosmin TRG was responsible for the first-ever release on Hessle Audio, and 17 years later, he’s likely still fielding questions about “Broken Heart” on a semi-regular basis. The Berlin-based Romanian has gone through several transformations since then, but following a break from releasing music, he’s just dropped a new album, Ecstatic Data, that abandons the dancefloor altogether. A critical effort that examines how “our projected avatars [seek] dopamine hits and euphoric meltdowns,” it’s available now on the Feral Note imprint.
Eris Drew is nothing if not a thoughtful DJ, which helps explain why it’s taken her five years to put together a sequel to 2018’s Raving Disco Breaks Vol. I mix, which actually inaugurated the T4T LUV NRG she runs alongside Octo Octa. Raving Disco Breaks Vol. II - Rock the House is meant to be a “rock ‘n’ roll infected house mix,” and it’s due to land on April 17.
MICHAEL McKINNEY HAS BETTER TASTE THAN I DO
First Floor is effectively a one-person operation, but every edition of the Thursday digest cedes a small portion of the spotlight to an artist, writer or other figure from the music world, inviting them to recommend a piece of music. Today’s recommendation comes from Michael McKinney, a Minneapolis-based electronic music writer who’s established himself as one of the most engaging new voices in the genre. In truth, “new-ish” is a more accurate descriptor, as he’s been steadily writing for several years, and while it’s not surprising that he’s contributed to Resident Advisor, he’s actually made the biggest impact at Passion of the Weiss—a site primarily known for hip-hop—where his artist interviews and staggeringly comprehensive mix column, Slam on the CDJ, provide a refreshingly thoughtful look at the current state of electronic music. Here, he highlights something from the genre’s experimental fringe, making clear that the most interesting music often has very little to do with the dancefloor.
Dylan Kerr “Live At Unit 44 02.09.23” (3XL)
One of my favorite things about electronic music is how easily it can distort time, collapsing musical histories into something that feels new and ancient at once. (See also: The entirety of the hardcore continuum.) “Live at Unit 44 02.09.23,” the latest piece from Dylan Kerr—a Berlin-based musician who DJs as Baptist Goth and as one half of Marsh—takes that attitude towards historiography literally, scrambling up spoken word samples and bit-crushing choirs. The appeal is both textual and textural—it’s about how Kerr approaches liturgical music with the everything-goes joy of an Orange Milk devotee, but it’s also about the sheer heft of the thing. Here, as with so much great experimental music, Kerr scrambles timelines, conjuring a whirlwind of sonic detritus in the process.
NEW THIS WEEK
The following is a selection of my favorite tunes from releases that came out during the past week or so. Click the track titles to hear each song individually, or you can also just head over to this convenient Buy Music Club list if you prefer to listen to them all in one place.
DJ Sotofett “Resonance (Deep Mix)” (Self-released)
For nearly a year now, DJ Sotofett has committed himself to an unusual marketing startegy: every time he has an upcoming event at Tresor, he posts a new EP on Bandcamp that’s specifically dedicated to the night he’s promoting. In 2024, he’s also sweetened the pot by offering up these EPs on a name-your-price basis—but only until the date of the Tresor gig. Is this a worrisome sign of just how disposable music has become? An example of the lengths artists now need to go to in order to get even their own fans to pay attention? Or maybe it’s simply a way for DJ Sotofett, who’s always been prolific, to flex his creative muscles and put some tracks to good use that might have otherwise sat dormant on his hard drive.
But if the question of “what does it all mean?” is set aside, we’re left with the music itself, and the new Resonance Dubs Vol. 1 is a collection of four very solid tunes, each one a different iteration of “Resonance.” Though it’s rooted in dub techno, there’s nothing snoozy about the EP, which keeps its propulsive, reverb-swaddled drums high in the mix. The “Deep Mix” further ups the ante by leaning into melody, employing synth riffs that recall both Lil Louis’ classic “French Kiss” and any number of ’80s horror soundtracks.
data plan “Insecure” (Texture)
Gesloten Cirkel “Everything for the Dev” (Selvamancer)
There’s something timeless about quality electro, which is perhaps why “Insecure,” a track from the debut EP by Berlin-based Montrealer data plan, sits so comfortably alongside “Everything for the Dev,” a new song from one of the genre’s most celebrated veterans. Gesloten Cirkel is nothing if not reliable, and his I Live in the Midwest EP—for the record, he does not—often sounds like a welcome throwback to his brilliant 2014 full-length, Submit X. That’s particularly true on “Everything for the Dev,” a slightly haunted cut which combines its gut-rumbling bass and razor-sharp rhythms with freakily twisted vocal fragments and tweaky flare-ups. “Insecure,” a highlight of Late to the Party, Start Without Me (which also happens to be the inaugural release from Detroit party Texture’s new label arm), operates in a similar space, but data plan takes a more sci-fi approach, her bubbling acid lines and perky melodies conjuring visions of an epic trip through the cosmos.
Decoder “Tenuous Sentiment” (Fixed Rhythms)
Between his work as Decoder and Cratan during the past few years, Dallas producer Gautham Garg has quickly established himself as one of the most promising young techno talents in the US, and his excellent new Ghanaprajna album should further bolster his reputation. Yet it’s LP cut “Tenuous Sentiment,” a surprise detour into electro, that proves most memorable, suggesting that referring to Garg as solely a techno artist may no longer be sufficient. With its neon glow and airy flow, the track recalls both Kraftwerk’s “The Model” and Light & Magic-era Ladytron, but Decoder smartly prioritizes forward momentum over kitsch, ensuring that the bouncy tune feels more like a modern dancefloor production than a nostalgic trip down memory lane.
Omega “Le Rève” (Anacalypto)
Speaking of nostalgia, new compilation The Hidden Beauty of Dutch House '94-'98 opens an immensely satisfying portal to one of the few corners of ’90s dance music that hasn’t been endlessly examined, mythologized and resuscitated. Focusing specifically on the melody-rich sounds coming out of the Netherlands at that time, many of the tracks could technically be classified as trance or progressive house, but regardless of their specific genre designation, they make clear that although tales of the mid ’90s are often dominated by the UK, their Dutch neighbors added plenty to the conversation. Originally released in 1996, Omega’s “Le Rève” is a euphoric shot in the arm, a joyous and (slightly) psychedelic trance tune—remember, trance had not yet become totally ridiculous at that point—with technicolor melodies that practically sparkle their way across the dancefloor.
Kreggo “Tochi” (Nous’klaer)
An Italian artist who’s tried on a number of different aliases—and genres—over the past decade, Kreggo hits his stride on “Tochi,” the elegant closing number of his new Swaying EP. While the rest of the record revels in busted beat patterns and hints of atonal skronk, “Kreggo” charts a path that’s not only linear, but sonically subterranean, bathing its moody pads and methodical thump in a scratchy layer of reverb. Is it dub techno? Deep techno? Tasteful prog? Just a relaxing cruise through the bowels of a local nightclub? Whatever it is, it’s very, very good.
Four Tet “Daydream Repeat” (Text)
Three, the new album from Four Tet, is… fine. Of course it is. However you feel about Kieran Hebden, especially now that he’s in his “hanging out with Fred again..” and “causally making a Taylor Swift edit” era, there’d no denying that the English producer has made a whole lot of incredible music over the years, and that history shines through on the new record. Have a hankering for his ambient work? His forays into jazzy beatmaking? IDM? Techno-ish stuff? You can find all of that on the LP, and it’s all passable, but there’s one track, “Daydream Repeat,” that’s on par with some of his best material. Constructed atop a shuffling, not-quite-techno beat, it’s got just enough energy for the dancefloor, but it’s the array of heavenly harp plucks that prove most captivating, their plinky biss taking the track into a zone that’s reminiscent of Aphex Twin’s unimpeachable “On.”
Will Hofbauer “Ah! Bats!” (Aus)
Building on an impressive run of recent releases on labels like Wisdom Teeth and Local Knowledge, London producer Will Hofbauer—who also heads up the superbly curated Third Place imprint and recently launched the whir outpost with friend and frequent collaborator Sangre Voss—taps into his inner goofball on “Ah! Bats!,” the title track of his latest EP. While the song itself is essentially a skippy techno cut with hints of UK bass music, Hofbauer harnesses the joyous power of the stutter, layering rapid-fire vocal snippets atop the track’s steady bounce and elastic basslines, occasionally stretching the latter in an almost cartoonish fashion. “Ah! Bats!” isn’t funny, per se, but it is fun, in a way that (thankfully) doesn’t require a full descent into silliness.
Submorphics “Astroglider” (ThirtyOne)
Can a song still be described as “pop jungle” if it doesn’t include any vocals? Probably not, but “Astroglider”—the closing number on Submorphics’ new Galattico EP—is an undeniably catchy little tune. Drum & bass often prefers to linger in the darkness, but this track goes in the exact opposite direction, its fuzzy Amen breaks oozing pep as its lustrous melodies exhibit the same sort of digital sheen one might expect from a video game soundtrack. There’s a simplicity to the whole thing, but when a song has a hook like this one, it’s usually best when the producer stands back and stays out of the way.
Slowfoam “Somniferous, Like a Piquant Crescent” (Somewhere Press)
The music of Slowfoam is technically ambient, but it is anything but chill. Perfect for a world in which we’re constantly being bombarded by stimuli, new album Transcorporeal Portal stitches together all sorts of seemingly disparate sounds, moving through textures, melodies and moods with the cavalier attitude of a bored teenager endlessly scrolling social media. The effect can be jarring, but those willing to stick around will find that Slowfoam has more to offer than chaos, and displays a keen eye for spotting the gems—both beautiful and bizarre—buried among the mountains of digital clutter we’ve surrounded ourselves with. “Somniferous, Like a Piquant Crescent” is built around a bit of ghostly bit of spoken word, its prose made small and distant by the weight of the surrounding sonics, which move between looming drones, choir-like oscillations and crackling field recordings. Parsing the song’s exact composition could take hours, even days, but the music’s impact, though subtle, is immediate. Transcorporeal Portal may not leave listeners feeling good, but it will definitely leave them feeling something, and that alone feels like an accomplishment.
That’s all I’ve got for today’s edition of First Floor. Thank you so much for reading the newsletter, and, as always, I do hope that you enjoyed the tunes. (Don’t forget, you can find them all on this handy Buy Music Club list, and if you like them, please buy them.)
Until next time,
Shawn
Shawn Reynaldo is a freelance writer, editor, presenter and project manager. Find him on LinkedIn and Twitter, or you can just drop him an email to get in touch about projects, collaborations or potential work opportunities.