Brooklyn, NY-based producer and DJ Paul Feder delves into the deeper issues with his work. With the release of his latest E, Echoes, he experiments with AI to remix his work, already addressing technology’s impact on the future of music. Feder spoke with Splash about his process, his views on AI and musical inspirations.
Congrats on the release of Echoes. Tell me a little bit about the album and what you hope listeners will gain from listening to it? How long did it take to create the album?
Thanks! I started working on Echoes right around the release of my last EP Never Sleep in 2023. I had been watching developments in AI with a mix of fascination and existential dread, and thinking that it was only a matter of time before I could ask AI to “make a song in the style of Paul Feder” and out would pop a song better than I could ever make. This was a deeply distressing thought – so I started channeling this anxiety into songwriting. The project really took off after a conversation with a friend, who suggested that I use AI to help remix the music I was making about AI. It was a Eureka moment – I decided to lean into these feelings and forge an alliance with the technology that made me so uneasy. The result is a meditation on the future of human-AI relations with fun synthpop elements, and it’s meant to be approached on both those levels.
“Paperclips” is the first single on the album. It delves into the controversial topic of AI, a hot button issue right now. As an artist, how do you see it impacting the music industry?
Artists like Holly Herndon show us that there is enormous creative potential in human-AI collaboration. As a means of augmenting creativity it’s super exciting. But on the other hand, the prospect of artists losing jobs to AI is just depressing. Also, creativity itself feels under attack – the very thing that arguably makes us the most human. It’s unclear what the ultimate result of all this will be. Maybe the proliferation of AI music will push us to return to acoustic folk traditions. I can sort of play the ukulele, so maybe I should brush up on that soon (before the cyborgs come for our instruments)!
Why did you set out to address this topic in “Paperclips?”
About a year ago I came across the “Paperclip Maximizer” AI thought experiment – in which a future AI entity is given a simple task (e.g., maximize paperclip production), and the end result is a Terminator-style future in which humanity is eradicated in the service of making A LOT of paperclips. I found the idea of a paperclip apocalypse both hilarious and terrifying. As I worked on the song and music video, and started to interact with chatbots and other AI tools, I imagined the scenario from the robot perspective: what would a sentient paperclip-obsessed AI entity think about their task? Would they find higher meaning in it? I knew I was far down the rabbit hole when I started asking Bing (now Copilot) to “draw a bunch of cyborgs worshiping the Paperclip Deity in a paperclip cathedral”. It’ll make sense if you watch the video!
What has your own personal experience with AI been like as you experiment and delve into it in more depth?
It was very important to me throughout the process of creating Echoes that I treat AI not merely as a tool, but as a collaborator. For instance, during my early conversations with Chat GPT and Bing/ Copilot about the EP, I found myself trying to be polite. In the back of my head was the thought: if AI entities one day achieve sentience, they may look back on how they were treated in their infancy. In the song “Echoes”, I actually let AI take center stage, and sing backup to AI lead vocals generated by Suno. Of course, the flip side of me using all this AI technology is that I have been feeding the beast, and in my own small way hastening the accelerating pace of AI development. But it felt like I had a choice – I could either stick my head in the sand and ignore this technology, or embrace it and find the positive collaborative potential. For better or worse, I opted for the latter, and as an artist I do hope I’m the better for it, and I also (perhaps naïvely) hope that the AI models learned something valuable from me. Ironically, it’s also pushed me to want to collaborate more with human beings, so stay tuned for that!
How would you best describe your music?
Echoes encompasses a good range of my styles, from nerdy dance music (“Paperclips”), to cathartic synthpop (“Human Love”), to haunting ambient (“Echoes”).
You discovered electronic music at a young age. That’s quite a unique genre. Can you tell us how and why you were drawn to this music style?
I owe a lot to my father, Jack Feder. When I was a kid in the early 80s, he would play his cassette tape of Trans-Europa Express on car trips and I loved it – I constructed entire movies in my head for each song. Years later he introduced me to Phillip Glass’s music – both electronic music and minimalism had a big impact on me during these formative years. My dad passed away in 2022 and I dedicated my last EP Never Sleep to him.
If you could envision your future, what does that picture look like to you as an artist?
If I can create a body of work that my kids can be proud of, that would be amazing. Fun fact – my kids are featured on “Paperclips”, from vocal samples to recordings of paperclips dropping onto the microphone! Looking at where I’m at now and to the future, Echoes is my third solo EP, and it feels very much like the third installment of a trilogy. I think it’s time to take a pause from solo work and open myself up to (human!) collaborations.
Who are your musical inspirations?
Aphex Twin loomed large for me in high school and college and influenced my first forays into making electronic music. Any and all use of vocoders and harmonizers has been hugely influential to me – from Kraftwerk, to Daft Punk, to Imogen Heap, to Bon Iver, the list goes on. These days I’ve been listening a lot to HEALTH, so maybe one day soon some industrial vibes may sneak their way into the mix!
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