About Latent Imprints
Latent Imprints is an album that blurs the boundaries between free jazz, improvisation, electronic music, and artificial intelligence. The album explores the entangled relationship between humans and machines in the age of AI, reflecting on the uncanny, mythological qualities of AI-generated outputs and their interactions with human musicians. The album imagines AI as a contemporary, post-digital myth: a repository of glitched, shape-shifting creatures whose uncanny sounds both disrupt and extend human music-making.
The album’s title, Latent Imprints, encapsulates its core themes: the residual human presence imprinted on AI-generated sounds, which often carry obscure and unnerving qualities. It also highlights the potential for humans to adapt and learn from machines, a process that AI-pioneering artists Dadabots describe as "adversarial human learning." Each track is named after mythological creatures from diverse traditions, clinically glitched by AI.
Sveið’s music resides at the intersection of free jazz, improvised music, and cutting-edge electronics, powered by neural audio synthesis—a deep learning technique that uses raw-audio data to train neural networks. AI models trained over weeks on specialist computing facilities, including some trained specifically for Latent Imprints, breathe life into synthetic voices, virtual saxophonists, and cloned drummers. Through live coding, these models are dynamically explored and manipulated in real-time, interacting with top human players to create dynamic, boundary-pushing, and thought-provoking music.
Entirely improvised and recorded in a single session, the album unfolds as a narrative that examines the shifting dynamics between humans and AI. It opens with a harmonious musical ecosystem where humans and AI symbiotically interact. As the album progresses, the balance shifts: the AI gradually asserts more autonomy, culminating in the temporary replacement of the drummer and saxophonist with uncanny AI clones in the later tracks. The result is a record that could be seen as a piece of speculative fiction, where AI-mythological entities and human improvisers coexist and co-create futuristic music, rooted in the traditions of jazz and improvised music.
About Sveið
Sveið is a new UK-based power trio, powered by AI, featuring saxophonist James Mainwaring, laptop improviser and live coder Federico Reuben, and Norwegian improvising drummer Emil Karlsen.
James Mainwaring is a saxophonist and composer immersed in jazz and improvised music. He is active as an individual artist and as a member of various groups, including Roller Trio, Tipping Point, and The Exu. He gained prominence as a member of Roller Trio, whose 2012 debut album was nominated for prestigious awards such as the Mercury Prize, MOBO Best Jazz Act, and Jazz FM Best Newcomer. Roller Trio has released multiple studio albums, two live albums, a film soundtrack, and has toured extensively. In addition to his work with Roller Trio, James has been involved in projects like Tipping Point, featuring acclaimed pianist Matthew Bourne, which won the Emerging Excellence Award in 2013. As a solo artist, his recent releases include Meditations 1A (2023) and Mycorrhiza (2021), the latter described by critics as a reflection of our chaotic times and an essential artistic statement (Downtown Music Gallery). James has collaborated with Nduduzo Makathini, Django Django, John Law, Dave Kane, Morten Schantz, Sean Foran, and Space Fight, among others. His guest performances have taken him to prominent venues, festivals, and radio and TV broadcasts worldwide.
Federico Reuben is a composer, sound artist and live-electronics performer. His work includes compositions for acoustic, electroacoustic, and mixed ensembles, laptop improvisations, computer-mediated performances, fixed media, hybrid works, installations, collaborations and computer programs. As a laptop improviser he has performed with improvisers such as Elliott Sharp, John Edwards, Steve Noble, Mark Sanders, London Improvisers Orchestra, Tony Marsh, Alekander Kolkowski, Ingrid Laubrock, Alexander Hawkins, Rachel Musson, and Dominic Lash. He is also co-founder of netlabel and artist collective squib-box with Adam de la Cour and Neil Luck. He is Associate Professor at the University of York where he carries out interdisciplinary and practice research in music and music technology. Recent research projects include an AHRC-funded network ‘Datasounds, Datasets and Datasense: Unboxing the hidden layers between musical data, knowledge and creativity’ and the establishment of the Music AI and Interactivity Lab at the School of Arts and Creative Technologies.
Emil Karlsen is a Norwegian improvising drummer currently based in the UK. Described as a “a real force on the UK improvised music scene”, he’s establishing himself working the span from free improvisation to free jazz. Occupied with the exploring timbral possibilities of the drum kit, he performs with Philipp Wachsmann, John Butcher, Phil Durrant and Maggie Nicols to mention some. Apart from being an active performer he’s central in the revitalisation of the historic Bead Records.