Keroaän

Daunting In Its Variousness:
First In A Suite Of An Indeterminate Number of Pieces


Keroaän Artificial Intelligence developed by Ian M. Fraser & Reed Evan Rosenberg.

Performed by Keroaän without any human intervention whatsoever.

Mastered by Joe Panzner.
Thanks to St.Lumenta.

hand-painted fan cd-rs
clear poly slim cases, labeled with clear stickers
edition of 100

sold out
last copies available and digital distribution via Ian's bandcamp page: ianmfraser.bandcamp.com/

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Wow. Just... fucking wow. This is awesome. Reed Evan Rosenberg and Ian M. Fraser have created a musical AI by "implementing XENAKIS'S Dynamic Stochastic Synthesis." That means this shit wrote itself. A computer composed this. And this is INSANE. Crazy computer noise that borders on unlistenable, except for the fact that it's totally fucking listenable. Sounds of all sorts in here, helium struggling to escape from balloons, metal coins scraping against hard plastic, hail storms & train wrecks, avalanches & atomic bombs, DIY prop plane motor whir, NES consoles aflame, ancient computer hardware disintegrating before your eyes, even a brief techno interlude. Absolute aural destruction. Daunting In Its Variousness is a goddamn workout and a half. 100% intense & 200% amazing. And apparently the live show is just as nuts, "lasers, strobe lighting, and fog synched to both audible and structural qualities of the music as an infinitely morphing chorus of digital voices croon, cry, scream and everything in between." FUCK these dudes need to send their genius computer on tour and hit up Boston stat.

- Justin Snow, AntiGravity Bunny



The diametric opposite of calm and serene is that strange inhuman noise offered by Keroaän, on a mini-CDR called Daunting In Its Variousness: First in a suite of an Indeterminate Number of Pieces (COPY FOR YOUR RECORDS CFYR03). This crackling and human-crushing diabolical noise may have had its origins in computer code, if the notes are anything to go by; they refer to Keroaän artificial intelligence, developed by Ian M. Fraser and Reed Evan Rosenberg. The actual music of course is performed by Keroaän itself “without any human intervention whatsoever”. Give yourself time to work through the unfamiliar and near-painful sensations afforded by the gritty surfaces here, and eventually you may be rewarded with near-musical swipes and unearthly screams of complaint issuing from the bowels of this huge chunk of code as it passes through the functions of a media player. The performance is also chopped apart into segments that incorporate heart-stopping silences in among the grunckering brattlements, acting in a grotesque parody of conventional musical dynamics. It may seem stilted and unnatural at times, but the achievement here is the glorious impossibility of it; no human being could ever bring themselves to the point where they might conceive of making noise music in this way, let alone have the courage to execute it. Proof once again that the machines are taking over, and they will win. Fraser and Reed may one day manage to write a machine-readable script that acts as a simulacrum for a virtual Merzbow. Note also the use of the Cagean term “indeterminate”, and the painterly brush work on the disc adding a splash of fine-art loft-scene vibe. From 16 January, another nifty slice of marginal New York experimentism.

- Ed Pinsent, The Sound Projector



Keroaän is a musical A.I. program developed by Ian M. Fraser and Reed Evan Rosenberg using XENAKIS'S Dynamic Stochastic Synthesis... Non determinist "music" on a Fixed state machine- tricky... The subject is complex and 'quite' large, even to the idea of describing the sounds so produced, more than human / human description, I cant help wonder though i know Heidegger would disapprove, how any Dasein is authentic by nature of biology, a hence human air born auditory systems. This I'm exploring elsewhere, music - should it be limited to human auditory systems? Regardless this is a sound work, though its significance for me is much more in the move into territories outside of the correlationist's ear. Here using A.I. and stochastics. One criticism (which is a positive generation arising from such work!) I have lies in the ontologies of Stochastics Vs those of k-multicombinations, i.e. multi sets or bags, in simple terms the totality of 'all possible' rather than the non totality of probables. Probability has for me a possible emptiness in infinities, which is obvious in my own work. I prefer the pedantic algorithm to the stochastic chimp, though this is not to be seen a pejorative description, the play of probabilities offers much, its potentially an embracing field (it includes Meillassoux's future God!) and it strikes me as something more in my personal psychology to prefer "bags" to great apes. The whole project is commendable in its openness and the placing of so many themes on the table, it's a pity I can't explore more here. Possibilities, probabilities, infinities and time! What we hear is 10 or so slabs of noise and tones, drone like oscillations which rise and fall, the first signs of a colossus. A release which has not only sonic interest, one that should open up a discussion for anyone interested in music or sound art, and one way around or out of any HNW nihilism or correlationist's circle.

- Jliat, Vital Weekly



Today was another pig of a day, ridiculously busy and overworked all day, and then I broke my glasses, rendering them unwearable. I am off of work tomorrow, and have needed a new pair for ages anyway so its no big issue, and fortunately, while my eyesight is not at all great when trying to view things more than a couple of feet away, I can see up close just as easily without glasses as with. So writing here tonight isn't really hampered by this mishap. Driving home from work for an hour in the dark was a bundle of fun though!

So tonight I have been playing a CD in the "fan" series of releases on the Copy for your Records label. As I've written before, I'm not sure where the name 'fan' comes from to describe these releases, but they are essentially 3? CDs that are set inside a further 5? disc made of clear plastic, that in the case of the CFYR releases are then hand decorated with a circular smear of paint. They are attractive, if probably quite expensive to manufacture objects. This is the third in the label's limited edition series, and is a piece credited to Keroaän, which is apparently a 'musical artificial intelligence' developed by Ian M Fraser and Reed Evan Rosenberg. The short piece of music included here, which goes by the name of Daunting in its variousness: First in a suite of an indeterminate number of pieces was created by the software alone, apparently without any human intervention whatsoever, though whether Joe Panzner, who mastered the disc counts as human or not isn't made clear...

I'll be honest, I have no idea how this kind of thing works. The Keroaän system is based on Xenakis' Dynamic Stochastic Synthesis, which I know even less about, but I do recognise the vague realm of sounds at work here as I have a simulator of Xenakis' original sound generators on my iPhone, which amuses me of short periods of time every now and again when I remember it is there. I do know that randomisation systems interact with sets of algorithms and other exciting mathematical stuff to create the sound worlds that we hear. In the case of this Keroaän work we hear high and low screeches, rapidly shifting wild oscillations, hums, fuzzy roars and generally a lot of rapidly changing synthesised sounds. Presumably someone (and I would guess Xenakis' original model has been used) had to set some kind of parameters for the potential sounds that could be generated, so whether it is entirely accurate to say that the piece of music has been generated without any hum any intervention at all is debatable, though perhaps only boringly so.

What is certain is, I would never have though that the music here was created by an artificial intelligence system rather than it being the direct work of a human being. The piece sounds like a noisy analogue synth improvisation, or perhaps a digital appropriation of an analogue synth as the piece does sounds very sharply computerised, but it also sounds like the kind of work I've heard before at the hands of noisier synth improvisers. It is then fascinating to think that the rapid changes and breaks in the music and the layering of different juxtaposed elements were created entirely by a computer. The problem is though, whether made by human hand or non-human processor chip, I don't like the music much. Even though I wouldn't have known that no human beings were involved, the music still sounds soulless and rigidly artificial, that kind of synthesised sound that does not pretend to be anything else, and that revels in its own ability to leap about through wild changes across brief periods of time, technical feats but not really anything more pleasing than that. Tonight Julie, my girlfriend, took a brief listen and told me the music sounded a bit like my infamously rumbling stomach, but I disagree, because at least the inner workings of my digestive system sound organic and open to error. While organic might actually be quite a good word to describe how the algorithms here work and combine, albeit artificially, there is no chance of error here, and even though the must here is as random as it could possibly be there is ironically an air of inevitability about it all. Lots happen across the nineteen minutes here, but nothing that particularly surprises or excites. An interesting concept then, and an excellent execution the like of which I have never seen or heard before, but I'm not in any hurry to give up on human beings any time soon.


- Richard Pinnell, The Watchful Ear



Дуэт компьютерщиков из Филадельфии. Про Рида Эвана Розенберга (Reed Evan Rosenberg) я уже писал ранее в связи с его сольной работой, а вот Йен Фрейзер (Ian M. Fraser) новый для “Современной музыки” человек. Вместе (да и по отдельности) они занимаются генерированием звука на компьютере при помощи математических формул и так далее. В данном случае они написали на основе идей Янниса Ксенакиса (Iannis Xenakis) софт , который и сотворил этот релиз. Кому интересно, узнают, как это делается. А имеет ли это отношение к музыке?

К современной экспериментальной – да, определённо имеет. И если жёсткий плотный громкий саунд ещё может вызвать ассоциации с харш-нойзовой сценой и сопутствующей ей безжалостностью к слушателю, то структура этого мини-альбома будет напоминать скорее что-то из мира академического. Точно не могу сказать, как дуэт сделал паузы: в реальном времени это было прописано или же это нарезка кусочков уже после. Суть одна — паузы настраивают слушать совершенно по-другому. Уделяя всё внимание звуку и только ему. Пусть это сделал компьютер, пусть случайно, но это настолько в духе времени, насколько вообще возможно. Дать короткую передышку и снова обрушить шквал хитросплетений синтезированных шумов, достойных для того, чтобы озвучить ими, скажем, очередное пришествие на Землю трансформеров.


- Ilya Belorukov, CM Magazine