Many of the great artists I admire said little about their work, leaving it to speak for itself. Generative AI provides a lens and amplifier to let what started as thoughts, evolve into sound waves and moving images. This is a part of the once fictional narrative of Deep Scratch (A Tribetable Novel). I’ve gone full pelt into the AI landscape and here present some of the highlights, as Hip Slop, a mux type.

Hip Slop is AI collaborative text to sound to video collage, as a beat tape, what was engineered to sound like a vinyl mixtape from 1999 or there abouts, the hey day of turntablism, old school boom bap, static, blunted beats, muted jazz, and weird lyrics. Note that all lyrics and turntable speak are original Steve Fly Agaric compositions, besides the few hallucinatory excursions into LLM garble-gumage. These audio selection were produced over the last 18 months, some AI remixed versions of old tracks, some only play out for a few bars, others are left alone.

Many of these tracks are released via bandcamp in the Deep Scratch vs Udio series, here selected, mixed and blended using Djay (for I-Pad). No real turntables were harmed in the recording of this mix. No real singers, musicians, or real engineers were consulted, insulted or catapulted into orbit during this recording. This DJ Flai mix is a part of the Deep Scratch Universe. The Novel and accompanying works Deep Scratch Remix, and, Between The Groove, help add context. A DJ Mantis, DJ Tardigrade and DJ Fly become world champions in a human universe, but at what expense to the rest of humanity, history, time and spirit? Remind yourself this is science fiction, everything you see and hear is machine learning and neural nets, sewn together by the current author into sound things and moving light things, and any resemblance to real living things is purely coincidental. As a DJ and drummer, musician and writer my work entails building stronger ideas and methods and putting them into practice, performance IRL.

I hope you strive for that too. In the meantime, as somebody who perpetually hears music and sees somewhat psychedelic visions, I shored a few from some deep dives, for your enjoyment, analysis and meditation. If the goal of the Deep Scratch project was musical time-travel, this mix demonstrates success in some sense. Outlines and new directions for The tale of the tribe. A snapshot from an alternate universe where turntables turn fables, narrative decodes, writes, reads. I hope this finds you well. All love. –Steve Fly

deepscratch.net

stevefly.bandcamp

patreon.com/stevefly