Artificial by Daniel Wohl

On Artificial, Daniel Wohl invites the listener into a sonic environment that is part organic, part digital, and overflows with a deep emotionality that is imbued into each gesture. Melodies blossom out of a sea of synths, glistening electronic textures blur the lines between composition and generative environment, and dreamy reverbs spill into every corner of the landscape imbuing it with warmth and life. “I imagined this piece like walking through a virtual forest where your sense of reality is slightly off; some branches are real, some might be rendered; some birds are natural, others synthetic. It’s that in-between space where you’re not quite sure what’s living and what’s programmed.”

“Artificial was written for Alarm Will Sound in 2022, right as AI was starting to shift how we think about making art. I started with a fully electronic track, then reimagined it as an acoustic piece for the ensemble, and eventually blended those recordings back into the electronic mix,” explains Wohl. “I was curious about how changing formats, digital to physical and back again, would shape the music in unexpected ways. As AI tools got more advanced over the past couple years, I fed bits of the recording into them and used what came back to reshape the final version. To me, the piece feels kind of hopeful as it leans into the idea of a human–machine collaboration in a way that’s maybe more optimistic than how I usually feel about where all this is going.”

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jan@newamrecords.com