JOHN MATTHIAS & JAY AUBORN
Ghost
Notes
They gave their computer limbs. Solenoid magnets converted audio signals into voltages that fired hammers onto a real drum kit. The computer became the third member of the band. On All Hallows' Eve they fed it a Max Roach drum solo. The drums came alive.
"Ghost Notes boldly explores human-robotic collaboration through mini electronic symphonies. The robotic drummer would sometimes glitch out and play unexpected rhythms. We embraced these errors. It was as if the machine had its own agency: John Cage's ghost in the machine."
John Matthias is a composer, violinist and physicist. Jay Auborn came to music from a background in fine art, making a connection between visual collage and the audio sampler. Together they have made several albums, collaborated with Radiohead, Matthew Herbert and Coldcut, and now, on Ghost Notes, they have done something genuinely strange: they gave their computer limbs, fed it the ghost of Max Roach, and recorded what happened when a dead jazz drummer from the 1940s played alongside them in a barn on the edge of Dartmoor.
The process was deliberately crude: solenoid magnets converted audio signals into voltages that fired hammers onto an acoustic drum kit. The latency in the process created an echo, a shadow, as the second drum kit mirrored what was played on the first. A kind of shadow of themselves. The resulting recording is a collection of human-robotic collaboration through mini electronic symphonies, and the artwork is by Stanley Donwood.
I got into sound and music making from a background in fine art, making a connection between visual collage and the audio sampler. That has influenced the way I think about making music, playing the materiality of sound, and how that texture for me is equal to time, rhythm and harmony as musical components. Discovering John Cage made me feel more at home within music. If John Cage taught me the why, it was chiefly the author Ernest Hemingway who taught me the how. Hemingway novels are full of lessons on creative discipline.
Looking back at albums that really shifted my outlook, Radiohead's Kid A was a massive deal for me. The album introduced me to the idea that electronics and tech could be emotive. I found the album via its artwork by Stanley Donwood, which lured me into their world. This led me to Autechre and from there Prefuse 73, hip-hop and jazz. I like artists who don't look back and who keep moving forward and trying new things.
Ghost Notes started as a kind of live album experiment. We wanted to bring the electronic and acoustic elements of our music together in one space and in one process. To help us, we gave our computer limbs so it could play acoustic drums and percussion alongside us, becoming a trio of sorts.
Ahead of the first experiments with the computer-controlled drum kit we asked ourselves: if we could have any drummer in our band, dead or alive, who would it be? Max Roach came up: the American jazz drummer who worked with Charlie Parker in the 1940s. On All Hallows' Eve, pre-lockdown, we fed a recording of a drum solo by Max Roach into the computer controlling the robot drummer. The drums came alive, reperforming his drum solo with haunting accuracy, as if Max was in the room with us.
After the initial experiment, we spent a week recording in an old barn on the edge of Dartmoor in Devon. The robotic drummer would sometimes glitch out and play unexpected rhythms. We embraced these errors and they became an exciting outside influence on our music as if the machine had its own agency: John Cage's ghost in the machine.
"There was a sense of time collapsing through technology as Max hit a drum in the 50s which made its way through time and tech to be in the room with us."
John Matthias and Jay Auborn · On the Max Roach experimentI think with every new technology people find ways to express themselves with it, and it's often the errors and byproducts of tech tools that create the most interesting art. I once read Bjork say something about how it's the role of artists to keep the humanity alive in technological advances. It's the glitches in this process that interest me, the unexpected happy accidents.
I think that as AI art becomes more omnipresent and surpasses our own technical abilities we will naturally think more about reasons to make art, and why that's important to us.
The history of ideas is to me a history of evolving contexts which include economic and technical contexts. At present, there seem to be some really important and challenging economic contexts which I believe will be the significant factors. They often get left out when music and other arts are being discussed, but essentially if no one is getting paid, then it's a hobby. So what will dictate the future will be these economic factors in my opinion.
All Hallows' Eve.
Max Roach plays again.
On All Hallows' Eve, pre-lockdown, they fed a recording of a Max Roach drum solo into the computer controlling the robot drummer. Solenoid magnets converted audio signals into voltages that fired hammers onto a real drum kit. The drums came alive, reperforming his drum solo with haunting accuracy, as if Max was in the room with them.
Max Roach, the American jazz drummer who worked with Charlie Parker in the 1940s, had been dead for over a decade. His hands, filtered through magnetic hammers and computational delay, were playing in a barn in Devon. A week of recording followed. The glitches became the album.
"There was a sense of time collapsing through technology as Max hit a drum in the 50s which made its way through time and tech to be in the room with us."
Dark Hedges · Copper Verdigris · Chemical decay as metaphor
The cover has been made by Stanley Donwood, who collaborated with Matthias and Auborn on the film Broadmead: The Movie. The image is called Dark Hedges, made from an original pencil drawing of the avenue of beech trees along Bregagh Road between Armoy and Stranocum in County Antrim, Northern Ireland.
Donwood made the final artwork using a Copper Verdigris process involving chemical decay, hence all the green oxidation in the image. They see this decay as a metaphor for some of the destruction of the digital sonic material in their album which occurs throughout the record.
A print of the original pencil drawing is available as an insert in the vinyl record sold exclusively by the Dinked Network in the UK. Mike Phillips used a Generative Algorithmic Network to compare the front cover image with the pencil drawing, selecting the strangest and most beautiful results from the AI. One hundred images survived.
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