we don't like AI. we don't like anything that's only sustainable as long as men with suits gaslight people during commercial breaks into believing in the rapture. there is practical social value in shunning people who make art with any of the numerous tools lumped under AI, signaling they've been told a dangerous lie and they're assisting in spreading it.
one time we were listening to an experimental electronic compilation album from 1985: Home-Made Music for Home-Made People Volume 3: Loopy but Chic (Soft Blend). we were like "this would be a really good jumping-off point to get into more experimental music" and we picked Tom Furgas. we saw he had a bandcamp and we were excited.
his most recent 20-or so albums (36 now) were all part of a series: their titles were a jumble of random letters and numbers, their covers were just the title on a random flat-color background, and their descriptions all mentioned the music contained was made with various effects units, music software, samples pulled from AM/FM radio... and AI music generators. we didn't listen to them. we still haven't.
he really churned those out, huh? must've been fun being stuck to the lever of the AI slot machine. sad he was one of the experimental musicians tricked into believing AI was bold and exciting.
but we kept scrolling down.
String Quartets No.10,11, and 12
String Quartets No.7,8, and 9
IDM9
IDM8
IDM7
Glitch Studies 49-60
Glitch Studies 37-48
Piano Improvisations, Vol.12
Piano Improvisations, Vol.11
Piano Improvisations, Vol.10
Mixcraft Projects Volume Twenty-Four
Mixcraft Projects Volume Twenty-Three
Mixcraft Projects Volume Twenty-Two
Mixcraft Projects Volume Twenty-One
Mixcraft Projects Volume Twenty
all of the albums just listed (lumped together for clarity, truncated for brevity) were in their own series with as many entries as their names imply. none of them were made with AI. many predate AI music tools entirely. it seems he's churning out AI albums in the same way he churned out non-AI albums - he likes making lots of stuff and not bothering to outwardly differentiate it or make it seem unique.
that doesn't bother me. but it should. we'd been told we were above guys like this.
his style is somewhat meandering, so i would try to recover our integrity by saying something like "although this seems fun at first it gets old quickly; you can't make that much music and have it be any good," but we've listened to and enjoyed equally meandering experimental stuff, like Cabaret Voltaire's "Methodology '74-78: Attic Tapes", as well as other devastatingly large electronic discographies like that of Richard H. Kirk (from Cabaret Voltaire).
and though we haven't delved deep into Tom Furgas's discography yet (and probably never will), he has pre-AI songs i find fairly good, like "Cowering Decoy, First Bite"'s thumpy stochaistic midi jazz, and "Mitt"'s claustrophobic warm industrial. and then of course his 80s stuff is the exact experimental electronic we love & listened to Loopy but Chic for in the first place; for example his 1987 album Turn Back the Rainbows, and his 1981-1984 compilation Blip Culture. the conventional moral of the grasshopper who spent all day fiddling versus the ant who carefully spent 9 months on each of its songs and drip-fed them as singles through distrokid, where the grasshopper died over the winter while the ant also died but made better music, doesn't appeal to us here.
a common talking point against AI music guys is "you will never know what it's like to make real art". this guy did, but i think most people would agree he's not what that sentiment is referring to; he already made his art, and it was okay, but now he's embarrassing himself using AI.
...but there's another conclusion that worries us, that people who don't like boring music could come to, which is that he was never an artist, because his pre-AI repetitive improvisational works weren't art, and him using AI only signals that he was never an artist.
all this to say, i wonder what happens when the AI bubble pops, but the term "slop" still exists.
somewhere on the internet, in cooler places we don't go to because we're not cool, this discussion is probably being had about artists who are popular.
ADDENDUM 2025-11-02:
for the sake of criticality: in this 2011 interview he does say essentially "i listen to everything but rap and country" like a vgm fan. so that's cringy. possibly not new information depending on your internal profile of a guy who makes 40 albums with suno.
You have a deep love and regard for modern classical, world music and even some rock. However, you are not a big jazz fan. Why not?
There is some jazz that I deeply love, such as Thelonious Monk and the electric Miles Davis stuff. And Gary Burton. But generally most jazz has this smarmy Las Vegas attitude that really turns me off. The honking saxophones, the fancy harmonies, the whole "Hey baby" vibe. Ugh. But I REALLY hate Country music, and Opera, and Polkas. And Gangsta Rap. In each of those kinds of music it is the underlying culture of the music that I can’t abide. But I like Bluegrass banjo, and Dixieland, provided there are no vocals with them.
he's cringy. still an artist. still cringy.
