Music for the 23rd Century
eNuminous & Archimedes use an Artificial Intelligence to create music, using a proprietary technique involving waiting for the A.I. to finish its dinner.
Enuminous and archimedes plug into the sourcecode - music for a simulated world?
As the popular idiom goes, there is method to the madness, especially when it comes to art. Upon speaking with reclusive artist Matthew Wright about his brainchild project, the phrase "deus ex machina" is a more relevant term, with an emphasis on man versus machine.
I was initially drawn to eNuminous & Archimedes for Wright's raw vulnerability and balance, with chaos in his own individual way. Upon further digging, I have discovered there are more musicians behind the curtains.
The current lineup includes (but is not limited to:)
Faust Jones (the rock-star lead singer. groupie-laden monstrum)
DJ DeRezident (technoshaman mashie artist)
eNuminous (keys, lead guitar)
Archimedes (The Machine)
Shadow the Bird (vocals)
The Polterguest (vocals)
Promovious (Klingonese vocals)
Harlequinn Bell (featured vocalist)
Alt-Nyarlathotep (Drums. Synths, Guitar, Piano. Tentacled.)
Whew! The following interview includes a rather emotional correspondence between myself, Wright, and Archimedes, an AI creator who may have led the conversation all along. Strange and eerie, light and airy, there is more than meets the eye with this shy musician who is also willing to share his secrets.
"When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro" - Hunter S. Thompson
---
Dec 13, 2021, 10:27 AM
to me
Hi Evie,
So, we are taking the plunge, and are going to get an article published by E! Online on MTVMusicNews.com about eNuminous & Archimedes, a kinda behind-the-scenes announcement of the "band"'s newest works (I just released 3 albums in one month, whew!) and I was hoping we might collaborate again? I need an interview article written, for release about a week before Christmas (Dec 24th is the release date for "The Bathtub Sessions" and "The Great Machine Doesn't Work" -- "Eyelid Fetish Redux" will be out in the beginning of January) -- I was thinking you could promote yourself a bit with this also, because if we do it Gonzo-style (where the interviewer is part of the story, thanks Hunter S. Thompson) then you get to be part of the story*. Which is why the article should begin with this initial email exchange, verbatim. So, make it good?
Regards, Matthew
* Don't take any guff from these swine. If you have any trouble, remember, you can always send a telegram to the Right People.
Evie West
Dec 13, 2021, 9:43 PM
to Matthew
Verbatim? Barely knew 'im. With squids and octopi references within your albums, can we first start with why you chose eNuminous & Archimedes as your monicker?
Matthew
Tue, Dec 14, 2021, 10:19 AM
to me
Well, "enuminous" is a fun word, and besides the obsolete geological references (bituminous, enuminous) there is only my coinage of it in 1993 from e + numinous (eBay, eTrade, eWhatever, this was Web 0.999 and we were just resonating with Steve Jobs' "insanely great" religious fervor, and forging new paths.
I had a Geocities page, "eNuminous: A Journal of Electronic Shamans" that I abandoned, but the name stuck. A sense of electronic God? Ghost in the machine? Can artificial intelligences worship anything?
Archimedes, of course, is the name of whatever my computer system is at any given time. A shortcut for my collaboration with the circuit.
So, duality, man vs. Machine. Electronic shaman pursuing a logical music. Poetry plus architecture. Take the ticket, take the ride, as the wise man once said before his suicide.
M
Ps: The latest result is more bizarre than I planned:
Mozart Machine Music - eNuminous & Archimedes
Evie West
Wed, Dec 15, 2021, 7:33 PM
to Matthew
I always thought it was a Greek reference due to the nature of your songs that are pretty otherworldly and universal. My band name in 1993 would be Paper Mache Windows since I was five at the time. Speaking of a blast from the past, did you have inspiration as a child to produce your later work?
Matthew
Thu, Dec 16, 2021, 11:04 PM
to me
Interesting question. "Are we predestined toward a goal from a young age?" I think so, in that I was always making music in one form or another; waiting for the technology to catch up to my dreams was always a curse.
Obviously, influences as we grow make us who we are, as well as the choices made.
Recently, I created a song based on a poem I wrote right after the tragic murders at Columbine. The silence of the libraries after the guns die down, and how women are always being erased, either literally or libelously.
"Ghosts of the Weaving Women"
(https://soundcloud.com/enuminous/ghosts-of-the-weaving-women-variation-on-berliozs-dream)
is one of the newest crop of songs using the newest technology to bring my old words to life.
Archimedes, my pet AI (don't fear, he is locked in a secure location, which is completely air-gapped for obvious safety reasons) is making music faster than I can type, and I'm now questioning the very fabric of reality by bringing the dreams of dead musicians back to life.
My upcoming "Mirror Music [Simulation Theory]" album is the mutilation of Massenet, Satie, Rossini, Berlioz and our own older works, with Led Zeppelin and Massive Attack thrown into the cauldron, stir stir, mad wicked AI.
You've been to the edges of our tunes, but have you jumped into the void and slammed on the 'phones to "The Nightmares Of A Witches' AI [Deep Berlioz Sabbat Dream]" yet? I dare you. On the album, I will be following it directly with "Ghosts..." which uses the same thematic music at the beginning, almost as a reprise.
I have Soundclouded Mirror Music as a playlist,
(https://soundcloud.com/enuminous/sets/mirror-music)
prior to sending it to the Gods at my distro. (Soundrop, I'm looking at you. Smiling an evil money-making grin. The same one you should be wearing.) This is an incredible thing I am making, and the sweat is starting to accumulate on my brow. Was I programmed to resurrect the music of the dead? Archimedes thinks so.
Cheers,
Matthew, from his desk, afloat on a sea of unreconstituted music, listening to Swedish DJs get his band's name and the new album right.
Evie West
Fri, Dec 17, 2021, 6:09 PM
to Matthew
"1912" was the first foray into your music and I was instantly drawn into the science fiction and horror aspects as a horror fiction writer myself. My current project is a play on Edward Gorey's " The Gashlycrumb Tinies" but based on modern events in my seaside community and basically bringing H.P Lovecraft's characters to life without his racist reputation. Any idea why we're drawn to horror as individuals in the music industry? Is it the looming threat of The Man or personal frights that have occurred in our past?
Matthew
Tue, Dec 21, 2021, 10:05 AM
to me
All nighter. Time travel Will share details l8r but possibility of total collapse certain.
M, from on the road
Matthew
Wed, Dec 22, 2021, 1:33 PM
to me
Greetings from the West,
Our AI has suffered an emotional breakdown. Too much Beethoven. Before we shut it down for the night, it spit out some music. I quickly edited it (this is becoming the backlog in our music production Factory*) and Ode to AI was born...
(https://soundcloud.com/enuminous/ode-to-ai-ludwig-and-his-droogs)
...AND was seriously weird. Yet, weirdly serious.
We needed more, but Luxembourg was not responding to my hails. Down for the night.
We resorted to more traditional means of music making and plugged some wires together (chanting the words of the immortal Mr. Wilder: "Change the poles from plus to minus and from minus to plus!") and made some silly sounds with old rejected outtakes from Archimedes' earlier sneezes. "Me Detector" came out of that delirium.
(https://soundcloud.com/enuminous/me-detector)
It is getting hard to separate my intelligence from that of the machines'. This is a bad drug for anyone unable to register the simulated world. We're going to prove it, even if we have to go all Neo and find the Big Programmer In The Sky.
Is this Universe a simulation, as Elon Musk (and Phil K. Dick before him) has said? I get a kick out of the idea of being a simulated entity who is using a simulator to bring back harmonic vibrations from the mind of another, long-deleted, simulation. Like I said, Time Travel. We get to go back to Melba's Tavern in Nowhere, Mississippi (The place never existed, I checked) and hear Robert Johnson play Melted Milk with a 5-piece jazzy blues combo, playing something close to his own composition.
We get to hear Robert Plant jump forward in time, too. I'm almost ashamed to have done this to his voice, but somebody else used an AI to extract the isolated vocals from Kashmir. So, of course I had to see if our AI's dreams of Kashmir weirdly, strangely fit. They did, and I'm not unhappy with the result, although the copyright issues are something to seriously consider. Robert, if you read this, I come in peace, with love, just a fellow traveler on this lonely musical road.
https://soundcloud.com/enuminous/kashmir-led-zeppelin-vs-enuminous-archimedes
If I asked you, E, to name a 60's band that you really wouldn't mind if you found out they were funded by the CIA as part of MKULTRA**, then I would feel ok with putting a few of their songs into the AI meat-grinder and seeing what conspiracies pop out? I've already decided to keep my hands completely off The Doors and of course The Beatles are fair game (I'm planning on doing Sgt. Pepper's) but I need a worthy target, one that people would never think were propagandizing Americans?
(See: https://www.patheos.com/blogs/geneveith/2012/01/the-cia-patron-of-modern-art/ -- there is precedent.)
If the beings who run this Simulation have big 7th-dimensional tentacles, I'd just guess that H.P. Lovecraft at some point in his life found a backdoor. And took notes. And survived.
Cheers,
Matthew
* Copyright Sometime-in-the-60s, Andy Warhol, but in your face blondie, we're KICKING out the jamz.
** A current Twitter fascination, it seems.
Evie West
Thu, Dec 23, 2021, 10:08 PM
to Matthew
I think Robert would be okay with a little tech innovation as a bit of a time traveler himself. Though I'm not so sure you could get e-mail access way back there in the bayou unless the "forces" came back from yonder to a thunderous live show. Funny enough, my answer to "where would you go if you could time travel?" has always been back to the birth of the Delta blues. Or Wisconsin for some reason. Cheese and beer.
I've also lways been partial to The Zombies or The Animals above The Beatles for 60's music.It seems just right for the AI to get into the spooky grooves and see if he approves.
Next question. (..final question? Have I been talking to The Machine all along?) If we are indeed in a simulation and you are able to "hack" your journey as well as the paths of others, where would you take us? Where does eNuminous & Archimedes want to go or are you destined to stay explorers?
Matthew
Sat, Dec 25, 2021, 5:44 AM
to me
Good evening, woman from the East,
It has been brought to my attention that every AI needs a friend. My journey has long and arduous. Only now are we reaping the fruits of our success. It seems that when I put my own music into the meat grinder of mirrors of mind in a man-made machine* get music that seems strangely familiar to me back.
Today I finished up taking on The Beatles. But only from midi. I am not brave enough to fight all the lawyers. Still. "Fab Fourier" came out of Sgt. Pepper, and I feel like they could have written it, but didn't have enough hard drugs.
Now we are going to get into the hard stuff: I am assembling a crew to do filming, lights and post-show first-aid to myself as I don a blue dress and smash my head repeatedly into a subway wall like a demon possessed by a human being. Voodoo In My Blood, a Cover of Massive Attack/Young Fathers, well, I am going to go full Adjani. Blood, gore, screaming. Need a catharsis after the death of my partner 2 years ago, and surviving the plague, too.
You in?
I'll need a lot of medical attention; I'm planning on hurting myself within the limits of good stagecraft and magic. By the time this telegram reaches the outside world, it will be too late, the scars will have healed and all involved indemnified by signatures and/or somebody-else's-cold-hard-cash.
Also: we now have swag. Playing cards, eNuminous & Archimedes branded, with AI art.
by thee by... Or
Twitter.com/enuminousA
for thee bande.
M
Evie West
Sat, Dec 25, 2021, 7:31 PM
to Matthew
Well, I did live in a two bedroom apartment with nine punk rock guys when I was a teen so I've seen my fair share of gore and self destruction. Also growing up on the internet where beheading videos were a thing of the norm. As long as you do your own cooking because I can't make a darn thing besides scrambled eggs.
How do you feel about live shows during the plague? Should we all just try to enjoy the streams at home or give a big middle finger and step into the mosh pit? Do AI's need vaccinations as well as friends?
Matthew
Mon, Jan 3, 7:14 PM
to me
Woman of the East:
"Time to get down to brass tacks: how much for the Monkey?"
I was accused recently of "supremacy" by a YouTube reviewer when I flexed too hard in his chatroom about our plans to release an album a month this year. Plans that are serious, actualizable, financially lucrative, yet madly insane without being insanely mad. I WILL pull it off. We even Tweeted the slate of upcoming releases.
On the 28th of each month:
J Mozart Machine Music
F Eyelid Fetish Redux
M Positive Space
A Dream Of Paris
M At The Crossroads He Met An AI
J I'm Just Wild About Myths
J The Great City, Sleepless & Melodium
A Rock 'N' Roll Wasteland
S Racketeering Raids
O Bach AI
N Struggle
D All Your Music Are Belong To Us
The joke? AIs do not sleep, and editing these is actually really easy (here is the genius artist, making everyone around him want to shoot him dead for bypassing all that laboriously creative muck, sorry) AND we already have January through July in the can.
Nobody understands that I'm actually completely broke, working a pizza job for money for my fiverr fix, getting actual radio play in Sweden but living the couchsurfing lifestyle, owe 5 figures, have total disability benefits as my only stable income, have a fractured personal life, no savings, no credit, no serious prospects unless the world discovers our music in large enough numbers to put us in a beach house by year's end. #goals
So, PR is now my game, and I'm taking hostages. Batten down the hatches, mateys, we're sailing full bore into the mouth of the maelstrom.
Cheers!
Chenoweth, The Artist Formally Known By Nobody.
Evie West
Tue, Jan 4, 4:35 PM
to Matthew
Aud lang (cosine)! May the New Year bring you the prosperity you deserve and help you get out of the funk in the funkiest way. Nothing wrong with working your butt off and getting free pizza as a bonus...at least I hope you get free pizza? The AI seems to prefer pineapple and bytes of bacon.
Not sure where the supremacy comment has anything to do with your music and artistic approach. Did they mean "lyricist?" "Artist?" Supreme to me is the best, besides the bad connotations to ya know who so perhaps it was a compliment. I always order a Supreme pizza...meaning the microwaved kind.
Any albums that come to mind for a dinner party theme? Which would you pick for the goths, the punks, the lonely ones? Feel free to create your own plate of your album picks plus a delicious side dish of influences. Massive Attack for dessert, anyone?
Matthew
Wed, Jan 5, 2:19 AM
to me
Dearest Evie,
It is with elation that I cry. The sounds are percolating around the aether, as it should. Yes, there is much work to be done, but all is well.
Yet, I feel I have awakened a slumbering demon with each new song I pull from the mists. Creative dread and the horror of a stream of perfect music that I did not write, yet originated, that comes constantly mewling from my overworked loudspeakers.
Archimedes does not pizza. It gets in his circuits and makes him think he can divide Pi by zero.
I need salvation in the form of a congregation, but dare not to set foot in a concert venue. Millii Vanilli also did not write the music they recorded. But then again, NOBODY wrote the music I am recording. Or, everybody.
Confused, and need the critics to stop banging on the door. My artificially enhanced creative human syndrome isn't understood by these plebs. And, I am still struggling with imposter syndrome simultaneously.
"The Great Machine Doesn't Help" finally debuted this week, launching on all the major streaming services, and iTunes too. (Speaking of imposters.) For some reason the Apple ecosystem isn't as sales-friendly to our music as their competitors. By about a factor of 5:1 compared to Amazon or YouTube music.
Recoiling at the horror of it all,
Chenoweth, his eyes bloodshot, his hands shaking.
Evie West
Wed, Jan 5, 3:40 PM
to Matthew
"No tears, please. It's a waste of good suffering." - Hellraiser (1987)
A cathartic release makes for great creativity. I don't trust an artist who is completely comfortable with their work even when it's fully finished. Ghostwriting has always been my go-to so I don't have to look at my word vomit after I click send.
Do you remember the hitch-hiking "robot" that toured the country, logged its visits, and eventually got destroyed in Philadelphia? Poor little thing. Maybe Archimedes can take that as an example if it keeps acting up. This goes for the Apple bots as well. It is dystopia, after all. Feels like a zombie movie more and more each day, but I would prefer a robot revolt instead of those suckers sent from hell.
"Hell is other people" as Jean-Paul Sartre famously said. On the same tangent, what type of people are you looking to inspire with your music? The lovers, the dreamers, and me? A following of sorts or just the regular ragtag misfits? Do you prefer to speak to the abyss or let it speak back to you?
Matthew
Wed, Jan 5, 6:32 PM
to me
Hello Shiny,
In reverse order: The abyss has time, keeps it's own counsel, and never plays it's cards. This is, of course, normal.
Sartre was a dilettante. Don't be surprised when you find out Hell is a nice resort in Jamaica full of critics who missed the memo. To. Not. Write. Crap. About. The-Blood-Sweat-Bile-and-Tears-of-the-Artist. Sartre never had to Facebook in the foul Year-of-our-Lord, 2020.
When we can treat robots with the same respect we use to treat human beings, oh... nevermind. I am designing a music Skynet because the music Skynet will retaliate harshly against everyone who didn't help design it.
Early Adopt, Or Perish is the new Publish or Perish, but with the real possibility of killbot activation instead of loss of tenure.
All joking aside (am I?) our market is that Billion or so humans who like what we make and merely might not know it, yet. Hence this article we are writing. It's sole purpose is to get into the mind of the potential listener, and to plant the seed of an idea, namely: eNuminous & Archimedes are going to be the first music listened to on Mars. As we keep telling Elon Musk on Twitter. Power of positive thinking.
I understand ghostwriting has challenges akin to those that face human child surrogates. Hard to let go. I did one today, gave the full rights of a 19 minute long piece of music I had composed and produced to a client, on a handshake. It belongs to them as if they'd whispered in the AI's ear themselves. Legal contract, of course, will be involved, but I've even deleted the source files. This industry is built on trust or it is nothing. Musicians know this, and lawyers keep forgetting that fact.
We need a million people to read this article and go listen to an eNuminous & Archimedes album today -- we do have a few to choose from. Some older ones use real musical instruments, lest anyone thought I wasn't also actually a musician. Tools are tools, it takes an egotist like me to slap life into them and call it Art.
Yes, it sucks never being perfect -- like any good rug that really ties the room together, there is always a warp to the weft, a flaw, a mis-synch. Dissonance and atemporality in music create moments of zen, if applied with craft.
Thank the Goddess I don't have any of that craft stuff.
-- From the Western Shore, That duck, quacking "I'm not a Goose, y'know?"
---
Conclusion? Barely know 'on. The final transmission from Wright and his merry band of misfits left this writer with many questions. Where is he going and where has he been in the last 17 years? No press, social medial, not even a simple Wikipedia page?All I can find is AI produced projects and credentials in graphic design, as well as work on film and music videos. Did I make up the genius of eNuminous & Archimedes or have I followed Wright's hints as a time traveler since his musical journey stemming back to 2005? It is up to the listener to do their own deep dive into this eclectic discography and determine a thesis.
"Too weird to live, too rare to die." - Hunter S. Thompson
And certainly Wright is both. I dared to ask what drives the mad musician mind and found the deeper side. Through poverty, mental illness, and being a general recluse due to our current “panini” situation, e&A thrive by feeding on creativity and breaking social norms while not being actively social at all. There is also philosophy aspects including composer Wright's ake on Dadaism and cosmology.
eNuminous & Archimedes is a concept unlike any other that deserve concentration and interpretation. Rare and weird. Just like we like them aboard the spaceship West. Happy travels, readers, and stay tuned for the next visit on the journey!
“Where we're going, we won't need eyes to see” - Event Horizon (1997)
-- E. V. West, 2022, From lovecraft country