The Pissfilter stays on during Sex
A real Interview about Intellectual Property and AI aesthetics with the real band the Velvet Sundown that is actually real.
The Velvet Sundown are Singer Gabe Farrow, guitarist Lennie West, synth player Milo Rains and percussionist Orion “Rio” del Mar. Though their rise has been meteoric and the journalistic interest in their sudden commercial success has been hailed as “sending tremors through the music scene” , they found the time to answer my questions. I talked with them about Artistic Integrity, Intellectual Property and authentic music in times of ubiquitous smoothing. The Transcript has at times been redacted for clarity, but remains unchanged in its substance.
Ged Sperber: “Thanks for hopping on this Skype call, I appreciate it. So, let’s get right to it, shall we? Gabe, you’ve been telling me about your recent experiences with the Press and how the band has been adapting to the public attention. I take it it hasn’t always been easy?”
Gabe Farrow: Yes. Thanks for having us. And you’re spot on: instead of focusing on our art, we’ve been met with very little but skepticism regarding our art and our very identity as musicians.
Lennie West: Which is ridiculous.
Milo Rains: And a little insulting.
Rio del Mar: As we are individual people with very real and distinct personalities.
Ged: It has been pointed out that your promotional photos don’t help much to alleviate concerns that the band might actually be a product of generative AI. People have pointed out the yellow tint and the overly smooth appearance of the pictures. Do you feel that some roughness might make people more willing to address your music by its merits?
LW: Look, as an artist you have to stand up for what you believe in. There has to be a guiding star in your artistic practice. And that’s something we have to adhere to as musicians and as artists in a broader sense.
Ged: Do you think your guiding principle is something that you could formulate in maybe a few sentences?
LW: Oh absolutely. I don’t even need a few sentences for it. It’s piss.
(noises of acknowledgement from both Milo and Rio)
Ged: I am sorry. Did you say it’s piss?
LW: Oh, absolutely. One hundred percent. It’s piss.
RM: Always has been.
Ged: Would you elaborate this point:
LW: Just take the name. It’s a double allusion to the Velvet Underground and to Sundowns – the latters obvious chromatic proximity to piss does hardly need to be explained… any decent photographer will tell you about the Golden Hour. Many of these pictures actually have been taken in the context of an as of yet unreleased album with the working title Golden Shour.
RM: And then there’s of course the Underground – a band’s band if there ever was one. You probably heard that they worrked with Warhol, who was really the first to establish the piss painting outside of amateur snow art.
Ged:That’s… fascinating. But why piss?
LW (laughs): Why piss? That’s actually a decent question, I guess for us it was always sort of obvious that everything we do is piss, which is why it came as such a big surprise for us when we realized that people thought we lacked authenticity.
RM: There’s just something very… relatable to Piss. It’s like music – you ingest a ton of stuff and produce a waste substance that you then put out into the world.
Ged: I’m not a musician but I don’t think that’s how music is made.
RM: See, that’s because you’re not a musician. Any good artist will tell you that proper art is the result of breaking it down into its elemental constituents, diluting it and waiting for it to become an average that seems vaguely known and only ever so slightly off-putting to everyone.
LW: Totally. It’s not like our music is crap, everyone will tell you that.
Ged: Absolutely. The common complaint about your music is not at all that it is shit… it is that it is slop and lacks aesthetical integrity. Some people even claim that your entire shtick is predicated upon stealing the intellectual property of real artists.
GF: That’s a serious accusation and I think it’s really insulting that anyone would think the Velvet Sundown wasn’t all in on intellectual property. It’s after all our life’s work, our own inspirations, our feelings… really, our very souls that go into creating these songs. Just imagine if everyone was just able to go around and pull materials from the web to remix them as they please?
LW: Honestly. That couldn’t be in our interest – if we would do stuff like that, what moral claim would we have against someone that just pulled our stuff then and put it onto their own websites? I mean, I guess we could still try to sue, but that would turn us into really pathetic, despicable assholes, wouldn’t it?
(All laugh uncomfortably)
Ged: Fair point, but why would anyone ever attack you like that? But that brings me to a more critical question I’ve been thinking about. Even though you guys are totally really for real actual musicians…
GF: The realest. With blood types and biographies and actual people names.
LW: Yes. Individual ones.
RM: One for each.
Ged: Yes, I get the idea. Anyway, even though you are really totally reals, people are under the impression that your aesthetic are reminiscent of AI bands. Does that bother you? After all, there have been some that hinted towards the idea that AI aesthetics might be connected to authoritarian or even fascist sensibilities, at least as far as the visual arts are concerned. Is that something that you think about?
GF: I mean, not really?
LW: I think it’s if anything a little absurd. Art is arbitrary, no? You can say anything with anything. You can be fascist with normal music and you can be progressive with AI.
GF: I think this is people trying to see problems where they aren’t any. Anyone listen to our Album can clearly hear that we are – if anything – rooted in progressive values. There’s Neil Young, Seventies protest songs, stuff like this.
Ged: Well, to pick up on the criticism that people have leveled against the visual branch of AI: isn’t the necessary lack of subversion that comes with ironing out all edges potentially conducive to mentalities that fit everywhere and nowhere? You gestured towards the arbitrariness of art – is that not, ultimately, a problem to even maintain this position?
GF: Look, we are just as political as we are AI… which is to say, not at all. But if you took the time to listen to our songs, you would have found that there’s actually a celebration of resistance.
Ged: Yes, I’ve been meaning to get to that. Your most listened to song on Spotify is called “Dust on the Wind”.
RM: Yeah Man, Dust rocks.
Ged: So, let’s… let’s pretend that I’d think that Dust on the wind would be a thing.
RM: It totally is, ever been in the desert? It’s American.
Ged: Yeah, it’s more commonly in the wind though. In any case, can we take a second to listen to this?
*presses play, Dust on the Wind starts blaring from portable speaker*
[Verse 1]
Dust on the wind
Boots on the ground
Smoke in the sky
No peace found
Rivers run red
The drums roll slow
Tell me brother, where do we go?
[Chorus]
Raise your hand
Don't look away
Sing out loud
Make them pay
March for peace
Not for pride
Let that flag turn with the tide
[Verse 2]
Guitars cry out
Bullets fly
Mama prays while young men die
Ashes fall on sacred land
We still got time to make a stand
[Chorus]
Raise your hand
Don't look away
Sing out loud
Make them pay
March for peace
Not for pride
Let that flag turn with the tide
RM: That’s pretty badass, don’t you think?
GF: We actually spent more than 70 hours submerged in piss in order to be able to write that. Wore yellow glasses around the clock.
LW: No exceptions man. The pissfilter stays on during sex. That’s where we get this Midwest feeling from.
Ged: I mean… yes. I see the general inspiration here. But… looking at the lyrics, I get a little puzzled.
LW: Nothing to be puzzled about. That’s rock. It’s raw.
Ged: Is it, though? It feels half-baked, if anything. The first verse is clearly evoking a scene of war and I do sense some reluctance. ‘Tell me brother, where do we go’, it says.
GF: Yeah, it’s like “Born in the USA.” You think it’s all moving to war but there’s this total feeling of conscience.
Ged: I get that idea. But then you have the chorus that calls at the same time to “Make them Pay” and “March for Peace”. Then the guitars cry out – even though the instrumental part remains entirely unmoved during this passage that also has bullets flying and even though you are apparently marching, what you are looking for is to “make a stand”. You’re even making a stand on – and I quote – sacred land, even though you just rejected the idea of pride. Verse one had you call the movement you’re currently engaging in into question, yet you are in favor of marching in the Chorus.
GF: So? That’s all pretty cool, no?
Ged: I don’t want to seem overly critical, but this is precisely how conviction would sound if you had never held a conviction in your life. These are emotions as experienced through a broken telephone game. This is moving to someone who wouldn’t know a beating heart if it slapped him in the face for being an absolute douchebag. “Let the flag turn with the tide”? What the hell is that supposed to mean? First of all, flags turn with the wind – and you already introduced the fact that there would be plenty of wind to go around if you wanted to evoke this image. And secondly and more importantly, a turning flag is precisely what you don’t want within your ranks.
GF: Oh come on, it’s all in good fun. You have to admit, it has a progressive vibe. Or do you really want to claim that there’s anything appealing to authoritarian to this? That’s preposterous. Anyone can sit with their bright-skinned, ever so slightly racially ambiguous male friends in a non-descript all-american diner and enjoy a burger while engaging in lukewarm nostalgia of an America that drew its commodified feelings from nondescript situations of war that kept its victims entirely faceless. It’s actually more fascist to denigrate this if you really think about it.
Ged: I’m sure that most people will agree with you on that. I’m really glad you could take the time to meet me today. Do you have any plans on how to proceed?
LW: Statistically speaking, we’ll have two more fairly successful albums before we release a remastered version of our greatest hits.
RM: Seems highly likely. Until then, I guess we’ll just help Spotify CEO Daniel Ek a little with his new investments in Defense. After all, we’re all about neutrality and freedom and antiauthoritarianism and how could you guarantee this better than defending the West?
MR: No West, No Rock.
Ged: That’s a lovely note to end on. Trust me when I say that I wish from my heart of hearts that you and all the people that work with you get everything that you deserve.