The Sound Board

My brother’s label had a band called Sleep Token for two albums then lost them in a bidding war. They blew up while the label had them and have blown up further since.

This is a single from their subsequent album. It’s mostly one guy with a cast of supporting musicians. I actually think the tune “Emergence” is a triumph of great production, good hook writing and great arrangement. Each time a hook is presented it’s done in a different way, and it’s quite melodic with nice changes. There hasn’t been much that’s blown my mind in pop rock in a while, but this did:

Thanks for posting Larry - a curious mix of influences that didn't fully do it for me but it's interesting.

I could be going mad but I feel I'm hearing the vocals and harmonies too aggressively autotuned and tracking too perfectly.

Guy Rowland wrote: ↑Apr 06, 2026 4:20 am Thanks for posting Larry - a curious mix of influences that didn't fully do it for me but it's interesting.

I could be going mad but I feel I'm hearing the vocals and harmonies too aggressively autotuned and tracking too perfectly.

Thanks for listening Guy.

I don’t think there’s a track made these days that DOESNT make me feel that way, but I’ve given up. It’s perfection or bust.

Lawrence wrote: ↑Apr 06, 2026 4:35 pmI don’t think there’s a track made these days that DOESNT make me feel that way, but I’ve given up. It’s perfection or bust.

Forgot to reply to this - it's a fascinating subject. So I very much hope that this is the direction of travel. And if AI is going to benefit art in any way, it is I hope in this area.

The widespread antagonism towards AI is based on inauthenticity. People now crave humanity, the real. Now we are all acutely aware that you can have too much humanity in music and history is full of that. Any time a singer has wanted a second take, she is selecting a best version of herself. Maybe you might drop in a slightly out of tune phrase and it will sound better. Compression, eq, reverb - all of it is to take off the rough edges of a raw human performance.

Then, fairly swiftly, we got to the point where EVERY SINGLE NUANCE can be made just-so without too much effort. And whoops, then everything starts to sound bland, the same and actually inhuman. When it comes to every other instrument, you can easily make a case that mechanical can sound best. But with the human voice, 99 times out of 100 I think the humanity needs to be preserved.

I use Variaudio all the time. But the trick is to never over do it, to not get to the point where you take away all the humanity. So I fervently hope that AI will do us a favour here - in the human voice, make us value what makes humans human.

I really doubt it. People have become so attached to the perfection of each note that anything that isn’t seriously auto tuned, even to the point of yodeling, just sounds wrong to them or at least that’s been my experience with civilians.

Also, when I talk about how robotic the vocals are on some of the pop music that people (again, civilians) play for me, they have no idea what I’m talking about. Yodeling and all.

Oh hey just saw St Rick did a video on them



His first comment on the vocals was that it sounded synthetic but beautiful. I think it's triggering me cos it somehow with all that vocal processing it all sounds like Kanye.

It definitely and deliberately sounds synthetic but still quite emotional (to me.)

Synthetic or no, I know two things:

1. I love the writing, the arrangement and the mixing.
2. I will never make a song that sounds that huge and impactful.

His many fans straddle the lines between pop, metal and emo. It truly is a wide open world for genre bending.