This month, Scene Point Blank is excited to kick off the new year with something totally new: the debut solo record from Shahab Zargari (Kill the Scientist/GC Records), New Oddities.
The record blends digital and analog technology, specifically by using artificial intelligence to pull from a variety of art that ranges from punk of the 1980s-‘90s to poetry of the 1800s, and a way array of carefully selected samples.
Zargari explains:
The album uses artificial intelligence as a backing band or studio band. They came in. I tell them what I want, they “jam” and we go back and forth until the foundation of a song materializes.
So sit back, relax, but keep your ears tuned for a wide and often surprising variety of sounds that manages to couple human emotion with synthetic rhythms for a realm of new oddities.
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Credits:
Track 1 features NASA sonification sounds from the Black Hole in the Perseus galaxy cluster
Track 2 features Mo Milan and words by Neil Gaiman speaking on mythology
Track 3 features a sample of a 1990s middle school choirs recording archive of "Kalinka" a Russian folk song written in 1860 by the composer and folklorist Ivan Larionov
Track 4 features lyrics by CRASS
Track 5 features Micah Haji-Sheikh
Track 6 lyrics are included in the album download as a Bandcamp exclusive
Track 7 contains a poem by John Henry Mackay
Track 8 features Mo Milan, as well as the first computer-based phonemic synthesis-by-rule program, John Kelly and Louis Gerstman, 1961 as well as VODER, Homer Dudley, 1939. Song also features an excerpt from a 1977 Anne Waldman's lecture on female writers.
Track 9 features audio from FMA Overlords - Net Neutrality Sample Pack
Track 10 features a sample of a default alert sound in Windows10 and the track Left In A Deep Trance By You by One Man Symphony.
Track 11 features samples of a 1990s middle school choirs recording archives of Beethoven, Mozart and traditional tunes as well as archival American news audio
Tracks 2-9 feature samples and arrangements using AI generated sounds from Soundraw
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