Futurism is one thing, clairvoyance is something else entirely. And since 2015's Get to Heaven, the Manchester team have developed an uncanny knack for predicting the political direction of the Western world. The record tackled demagogy and a thirst for autocratic power a year before the Brexit vote and the election of President Donald Trump. In their 2017 sequel, A Fever Dream, they considered the toll our current climate has on interpersonal relationships and pondered the cost it has on relationships.
“Re-Animator” was subsequently released in the fall of 2020. The song is rich with an appreciation for the simple beauty of the natural world in the face of an existential crisis, and was written in 2019, months before the pandemic's mass infection point. And on their last album, they moved on to the next frontier in modern anxiety: artificial intelligence. When Raw Data Feel was released in 2022, frontman Jonathan Higgs' use of a bespoke algorithm to process lyrical ideas was treated like a techie curio. , which shows how quickly this particular issue has permeated the news cycle over the past 12 months. Now in 2024, it looks like yet another example of everything taking a step towards tomorrow.
Therefore, they are already moving forward and breaking new ground with their new album “Mountainhead”. But as usual, Jonathan found himself faced with the question of how old the band's last record was already. “The interest in AI has gone completely crazy, but that's the nature of things, isn't it?'' He's a blonde, decked out in white and has bleached hair, sitting in a room in the label's London offices. He spoke from a pod surrounded by glossy red walls, befitting the ultra-modern look. “Things like this are increasing exponentially, and it already feels a little outdated to do the same thing you did last time.”
Having already worked with AI, he can fairly consider its impact. “I think there's a lot of fear around it,” he says. “Very heightened emotions, especially when it comes to art and machines. People get very anxious when they think that a computer can produce an emotional response. Personally, in my experience, I don't think it's scary. No. I don't think that would necessarily be a bad thing if every number one single for the rest of the world was written by an AI. AI can only reach that position if it gives humans the best emotions. Because, you know? Currency is emotion, and the proof is in eating the pudding.
“If Ed Sheeran sat down and wrote 27 different wedding songs,” he continues by way of explanation, “and it's not because he himself is getting married, it's just because he needs a wedding song, then he… You just have to try.'' Manipulating your emotions the way I do is actually no different from what an AI would do. It's just that he has an inhuman ability to draw from every song ever written and incorporate it into new songs. It's about collecting and collecting human experiences to create new works of art, which isn't all that different from what most songwriters do. It's an incomprehensible scale, and there just isn't an artist at the center of it. ”