AI v HI

AI and Red Licorice Records.
We don't use it. We believe in HI. Human Intelligence. Our artists write songs using just their hearts, their minds and notebooks and pens as well as guitars and pianos. The struggle to make something from nothing is what makes the songs we like good. The friction, the frustration, the arguments, that's what allows a song to be born. A song, like a story or a poem or a baby, needs to gestate and then be born in struggle. You can't just press a button and recite a prompt and expect to produce anything of lasting quality. 

And our artists record these songs in studios, working with engineers and producers. More gestation followed by more arguing, more revisions and redrafts, more arguments, and on and on until it's done. 

All of this work a necessary part of the process.

Then we put them out on high quality vinyl that will - potentially - live forever. No-one can upgrade these artworks (because that's what they are) out of existence. The damage that AI does to the arts, to the economy, to politics, to the environment means we steer well clear. If our billionaire tech-bro overlords do unleash pathogens that kill us all, or (more likely) cause a global economic crash because everyone has over-invested in technology that can't do what's been claimed for it (basically AI currently struggles to spell the word Rhododrendon never mind running the world), or if they drain all the world's drinking water in order to feed the insatiable thirst of data centres - then at least our hands will be clean. 

The tech bros seem keen to tell us that only they can save us from the apocalypse that they themselves have generated whereas at RLR we think what they actually want is for us to capitulate, to believe that AI (and only that developed by their companies) is unstoppable and uncontrollable (except by them).

AT RLR we think this is bollocks. Humanity - messy, stroppy, inconsistent - beats the robots every time.  We don't even like genre categories. Indie? Pop? Rock?  Folk? We don't know and we don't really care. Is it good? Has it been made by human beings sweating to express themselves properly? That's the only question we're interested in. That and does it sound great? Is it trying to elevate the spirit?

Pic: RLR's Herbie May being messily human

PS: A Spotify playlist
We don't like spotify. (for a host of reasons) Nevertheless it's a useful platform for our artists. Convenient. So here's a playlist of all the Red Licorice Songs out so far. Shuffle it. We'll have new records announcing soon... So keep your (human) eyes skinned and your (human) ears peeled.
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1fet1yFd5DZ4Kz4GOaRJLD