Latent imprints

by Sveið

Federico Reuben - laptop improvisation / live coding
James Mainwaring - saxophone
Emil Karlsen - drums

About Latent Imprints

Liner Notes by Thor Magnusson

Rising UK Trio Sveið Unleashes Human-AI Improv Collaboration That Will Blow Your Mind Wide Open

Pioneering the digital age just got better and 577 Records officially invites you to witness it.  Experimental UK-based trio Sveið just released a new album — and it’s wildly futuristic.  Latent Imprints presents the musical confluence of man and machine as they traverse the complex landscape that is AI evolution. You’ve got to experience it!
The recording comes to life where the worlds of avant-garde, improvisation, and modern technology collide.  It explores the concept of “latent space”, a cutting-edge phenomenon in AI music.  Within a multidimensional space, the machine’s infinite calculations generate combinations of sound, timbre, and rhythm — and then human talent takes it to the next level.
Sveið is an AI-powered group comprised of saxist James Mainwaring, drummer Emil Karlsen, and electronic artist, “laptop improviser”, and live coder Federico Reuben.  They are known for their predictably unpredictable sound born from their fascinating, entangled relationship with artificial intelligence.
All eleven tracks on Latent Imprints are named after mythological creatures from around the world — each spelled with a cyber twist.   They reflect the mythological qualities that emerge in generative AI outputs when influenced by real-life musicians.  In a time when AI is deeply woven into our daily life and often seen as a threat to creativity, this release fully illuminates the nuanced and ever-expanding potential for artists to adapt to, learn from, and challenge this technology.
“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 group explains.  “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 collaborative ecosystem where humans and AI symbiotically co-create. As the album progresses, the drummer and saxophonist are increasingly tested by — and temporarily replaced with — uncanny AI clones. 

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.

CREDITS

releases June 26, 2025

Recorded on May 17, 2024 by Alex Mackay in York, United Kingdom
Assistant Engineer: Sherry Yeh
Mixed by Alex Mackay
Mastering by Stephan Mathieu at Schwebung Mastering
Produced by Federico Reuben and Alex Mackay
James Mainwaring – saxophone
Federico Reuben – laptop improvisation/live coding
Emil Karlsen – drums

Artwork by Erin Robinson
Photography by Michael Hodges
Graphic design by Sergio Vezzali and Mark Smith

All music by James Mainwaring (PRS), Federico Reuben (PRS), Emil Karlsen (TONO)

AI models (RAVE, Caillon & Esling, 2021) trained at the University of York, Intelligent Instruments Lab (IIL), and IRCAM.
 
With support from the School of Arts and Creative Technologies, University of York.
Special thanks to 577 Records and the University of York.

577 Records is an independent record label based in Brooklyn, New York operating since 2001

577 Records
Brooklyn, New York
www.577records.com
©+℗ 2025

Latent Imprints. That’s the name of this piercingly profound album by Sveið, a free jazz improv trio of international musical sputniks. The name of the album is pertinent. There is something latent in this music, and in the sounds it comprises. Any sound is of course latent: sound can be framed through all kinds of phonographic inscription techniques and when we listen there are features in the sound that arouse us, depending on context, the reproduction equipment, the space we find ourselves in, the intensity of our attention. No sound is the same, even if recorded, because we are never the same when listening to it.

But now there is a new phenomenon in music called latent space. This is the neural soup that gets cooked when large quantities of sounds are fed into a neural network that grows synaptic superhighways of sample statistics; of what sample might follow another. The resulting models, trained on sonic data, thus become pregnant with infinite possible offsprings of sound depending on the trajectorial movements within the multidimensional space, through the navigation of gestural parameters or live sound. The models are mystical, dormant, silent yet booming, and full of virtual potential. They are in need of exploration, investigation, discovery, and performativity. This is what Sveið have done: they have trained a series of particular sonic models which they investigate through the laboratory practice of musical improvisation. And this we can hear very clearly on the album: there is a high intensity attention to latent sounds emerging from the models, which focuses, colours, and shapes the intense music we hear. Playing with brimming latent potential is clearly a fun process. 

Sveið. Three musicians—a drummer, a live coder and a saxophonist—describe themselves as “powered by AI,” and it is clear that there is something eery going on that infuses their music with uncanny predictive unpredictability. The album is described as blurring “the boundaries between free jazz, improvisation, electronic music, and artificial intelligence,” where one is a musical non-style, the other a performance method, the third an organological descriptor, and the fourth a description of a machine with a mind, of sorts. Respectively. Respect. Because the description is fitting and we can predict how the music would sound to a certain degree from that designator, but not really. The unpredictability of the neural audio synthesis, influencing an intense and energetic musical performance, yields a mindset of concentration and care that centres on this very exploration of latent sounds.

Then there is the imprint. An engraving that becomes a product after a process of inscription. On vinyl, CD, and stream. The phonographic act of recording this human-AI synthesis in the form of musical performance is a stamp in time, an etching, an imprint on its own. AI is not only reading for us, writing for us, drawing for us, composing for us, playing for us, but it now shapes our thinking and being in the world. In an age where neo-liberal tech bros line up with fascists inaugurating our future, we cannot yield full agency to the artificial output, the manmade manmade, the simulacrum, but challenge it, form it, negotiate it, and document through this inscription where the live music is lapidified. Thus the models become latent again: dormant, powerless, and silent, except haunting us in the mythic aigenic track names that title this music of much silence and much noise. Sveið. 

—THOR MAGNUSSON

Back to Latent Imprints

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.

Back to Latent Imprints

HYperromantic

by ARCO/Schopenhauer

Chihiro Ono violin
ARCO ensemble / Neil Luck director
Schopenhauer:
Federico Reuben live electronics
Adam de la Cour voice/guitar
Tom Jackson clarinets

HYPERROMANTIC is a radical take on Felix Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto Op.64 of 1844 (often abbreviated to MenCon in Japanese concert shorthand) from soloist Chihiro Ono and experimental music-theatre ensemble ARCO.

Whilst the solo part remains totally intact and faithful, the ensemble is a diverse array of classical players, improvisers, sound artists, and academics each navigating their way through the score, and pulling one another in unpredictable, incongruous directions. ‘Mistakes' or ‘errors’ are subsumed into a greater undulating landscape. But crucially, the performance still somehow sounds and feels like the Mendelssohn of old. The Romantics understood nostalgia as a sickness or a mania to be cured, but lately nostalgia has felt culturally pervasive. Retro music genres and videogames, rebooted TV shows and movies, the kitsch and the kawaii, all warm blankets to wrap ourselves uncritically in. Maybe the music on this album is both relishing and challenging that, pitting 18th and 19th century classical instruments against 1980s synths, MacBook Pros, live contemporary musicology, and carpentry tools.

The release is balanced out by an evil doppelgänger of a set by the improvising trio Schopenhauer. Although separated by a clear century, the aroma of Romantic affects, sensibilities, and manias seemed hyper-relevant to the modern metropolitan human; warped into new aesthetic perversions. Schopenhauer’s music coughs up ‘bleeding chunks’ of Wagner (both recorded and live) in a kind of audio mulch that’s hard to prise apart, a Freudian dredging of it all.

ARCO is an experimental music-theatre company based in London and directed by Neil Luck. They make new work for diverse contexts and audiences. Chihiro Ono is a London based Japanese violinist specialising in Baroque, Classical, Contemporary, New, Experimental musics, as well as folkloric, noise, improvisation, field recording and the art of sounds. Schopenhauer is a trio that specialises in tasteless expressionist improvisations, dark dialectics, banal conservatism and trashy late-romantic kitsch. The album was recorded live at Cafe OTO with support from Arts Council England.

CREDITS

Recorded live by Billy Steiger at Cafe Oto, Dalston, May 2022
Produced by Andy Fell, Neil Luck, Chihiro Ono

Release date: 21 June 2024
Catalogue number: BRC25

Metallurgic Syntheruptions

by Schopenhauer

Federico Reuben - Live coding / electronics
Tom Jackson - Saxophone, voice
Adam de la Cour - Electric guitar, voice

Free 'Hyper-Romantic Post-Industrial-Industrialist' improvisation.

This recording documents the first ever Schopenhauer 'session' which took place sometime back in 2011. Incredibly, every musical prediction laid forth in this performance/recording has since come true.

“We can regard our life as a uselessly disturbing episode in the blissful repose of nothingness.”

― Arthur Schopenhauer

CREDITS

Released July 9, 2022

Mixed and mastered by Adam de la Cour
Cover artwork by Bingo's Art Studio.

Shadwell Bokeh

by Ramanan/Reuben/Sassi

Roland Ramanan - Trumpet
Federico Reuben - Live coding / electronics
Roberto Sassi - Electric Guitar

Shadwell Bokeh is an album of improvisations by Roland Ramanan, Federico Reuben and Roberto Sassi recorded in a rehearsal space, on 14 August 2011 in Dalston, London, UK.

CREDITS

Released January 17, 2022

Mixed and mastered by Federico Reuben
Cover photography by Roland Ramanan

Midlockdown listening :: HDArchive

by Federico Reuben

2 x 3.5" floppy disks

for floppy disks contact tmrwlabel@gmail.com 

Contents:

Disk I:

name: HDArchive_(Part1).mid
size: 1,009,147 bytes
duration: 204:02 min

name: HDArchive_(Code).txt
size: 44,880 bytes

name: HDArchive_(Words).txt
size: 47,581 bytes

—

Disk II:

name: HDArchive_(Part2).mid
size: 1,222,606 bytes
duration: 157:14 min

name: HDArchive_(TrackList).txt
size: 200,680 bytes

CREDITS

Released May 8, 2020

Digital tracks on bandcamp are .wav renderings of the .MIDI format from the 3.5" floppy disks.

Concept, programming and production by Federico Reuben

Artwork by Kamil Korolczuk

tmrw> label

BAZA

by Reuben/Korolczuk

Federico Reuben — live coding

Kamil Korolczuk — tapes & modular

Baza is an album of improvisations by Federico Reuben and Kamil Korolczuk recorded live at the iconic bar Baza in Krakow on 9 July 2017.

C-30 ferro tape
50 copies
riso printed cover

for tapes contact tmrwlabel@gmail.com 

Includes unlimited streaming of Baza via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.

CREDITS

Released November 12, 2018

Recorded live at Baza, Krakow

Mastering by Federico Reuben

Artwork by Weiwei Leung

tmrw> label

Her High Noise

by Hanslip/Reuben/Hession

Mark Hanslip - Saxophone
Federico Reuben - Live coding / electronics
Paul Hession - Drums

Her High Noise is an album of improvisations by Mark Hanslip, Federico Reuben and Paul Hession recorded in one afternoon, on 17 June 2018 in York, UK.

CREDITS

Released September 20, 2018

Recorded with a Zoom recorder and an SE R1 microphone
Mixed and mastered by Federico Reuben
Cover Design by Eszter Takacs

6d696b75474f44

by Federico Reuben

One of Japan’s biggest pop culture idols for over a decade, Hatsune Miku’s synthesised voice and image have been used on hundreds of thousands pop tracks, videos, and franchised products worldwide. Powered by Vocaloid software, she represents the ultimate hyper-idol, a digitally rendered eternal bubblegum teen star. 

6d696b75474f44 is Federico's contribution to New Vocal Solutions (sampler), a collection of tracks by artists working with Miku’s voice and Vocaloid technology in strange and skewed ways. Painstaking programming, circuit bending, and algorithmic repurposing are employed to plunder the uncanny valley and dredge up layers of digital silt; an unexplored rich and mucky underside of pop subculture. 

Miku’s ubiquity and popularity is largely down to the independent, amateur, and open source fan communities that propagate her. As such, squib-box is making New Vocal Solutions (sampler) completely free to download. 

CREDITS

Released April 2, 2018

Federico Reuben - Composition, programming, production, mixing and mastering

Neil Luck - Voice, cover design

Hatune Miku - Vocaloid (synthesised voice)

A.I.LOVEs2scream

by Owczarek/Reuben

Paulina Owczarek - Alto Saxophone
Federico Reuben - Live coding / electronics


A computer screaming along with a saxophonist in machine-cosmic synchrony. Artificial Intelligence training, learning from human spontaneous invention. The machine becoming expressive, matching heightened states of consciousness, developing a taste for SWEET improvisation. A.I. trains for love, excess, pleasure, spirituality... heading for a brain freeze. 

A.I.LOVEs2scream is an album of improvisations by Paulina Owczarek and Federico Reuben. Recorded in one session on 22 January 2017, this album captures the coming together of two free improvisers with almost opposing methods, who yet manage to seamlessly integrate the organic with the synthetic, the physiological and the mechanical, the real with the virtual, the biological and the artificial.

CREDITS

Released September 1, 2017

Recorded with an SM58 and mixed by Federico Reuben
Cover Design by Eszter Takacs

Abhorrent

by Lash/Reuben/Baracskai

Dominic Lash - double bass
Federico Reuben - laptop
Zlatko Baracskai - synth

The Abhorrent trio joins improvising performers using different techniques and attitudes to yield musical expressiveness aiming at variety and exclusivity. Extended instrumental techniques and in-time composition is at the fingertips of Dominic Lash with his double bass. A laptop running SuperCollider implements interactive compositional machines using synthesis and recordings under supervision of Federico Reuben. Chaos arising from breaking modular synthesiser components is tamed by Zlatko Baracskai highlighting the aesthetic of error. The three together form a peculiar cohesion and unexpectedness traversing musical structures that border on the unknown.

Perro-ChimP

Federico Reuben – live electronics
Javier Carmona – drums

Perro-chimp is an improvisation duo comprising Javier Carmona and Federico Reuben and often featuring guests such as John Edwards, Fiona Bevan, Rachel Musson, Mark Hanslip, Adam de la Cour, Paulina Owczarek and Paloma Carrasco.

Perro Chimp @ Squib-Box

Orwell Fragments

by Lash/Laubrock/Reuben

Dominic Lash - Dou­ble Bass
Ingrid Laubrock - Sax­o­phone
Fed­erico Reuben - Live Elec­tron­ics

credits

Released June 29, 2011

Recorded Live at Cafe Orwell, Brook­lyn, NY, 14.06.2011

Recorded with a Zoom recorder and mixed by Fed­erico Reuben. 

Cover Design by Eszter Takacs.

Sporcizia Accademica

by FreuPinta

Spor­cizia Acca­d­e­m­ica is a col­lec­tion of short exper­i­men­tal pieces deal­ing with real-time plun­der­phon­ics, musica derivata, robo-improv, vir­tual tran­scrip­tion and alter-electro quotes.

credits

released January 1, 2011

Per­formed by Fre­uPinta and var­i­ous oth­ers. 
Mixed and Pro­duced by Fre­uPinta. 
Cover Design by Eszter Takacs. 

Spe­cial thanks to the algo­rithms and plun­dered artists.

Mowgli @ Modern Art Oxford

Adam de la Cour – voice/accordion
Dominic Lash – double bass
Federico Reuben – live electronics
Fiona Bevan – voice
Javier Carmona – drums

Recorded live at Modern Art Oxford, 21.10.2010.

E-tudes

by Federico Reuben

Credits

Performed by Piano Circus and Federico Reuben

Federico Reuben - Composition, live electronics

Kate Halsall, David Appleton, Adam Caird, Semra Kurutac, Helen Reid and Graham Rix - Keyboards

Esférica Cantándote

by Federico Reuben

Credits

Performed by Ensemble Royal

Hans Leen­ders - conductor

Arnold Schoenberg Zaal, The Hague, NL.

The Nolan's supper

by Federico Reuben

Credits

Performed by the Maarten Altena Ensemble:

Otto Tausk - conductor

Jelte van Andel - double bass

Karolina Bäter - recorders

Noa Frenkel - voice

Reinier van Houdt - piano

Wiek Hijmans - electric guitar

Koen Kaptijn - trombone

Michel Marang - clarinet

Anna McMichael - violin

Hans van der Meer - percussion

bimhuis, Amsterdam, NL

Daddy, Buy me A Radio Monkey

by Federico Reuben

Credits

Steve Potter - celesta

Ophir Ilzetzki - marbles

Richard FitzHugh - saw

Federico Reuben - electronics

Korzo Theatre, The Hague, NL

Cover - Painting by Levente Szűcs

Indefinite Ockeghem

by Federico Reuben

Credits

Performed by Jose Garcia-Rodriguez, Roberto Oliveira-Ogando, Ton Martinez-Risco and Lester Rodriguez Gomez - percussion

Schoen­berg Zaal, The Hague, NL