John Matthias and Jay Auborn join forces again for a new album. Ghost Notes boldly explores human- robotic collaboration through mini electronic symphonies.
On Ghost Notes, John Matthias and Jay Auborn’s latest album, the British duo take their experiments with sound to new levels, catapulting their work into unexplored territories of human-robotic collaboration. Matthias and Auborn first partnered for the 2017 release Race to Zero. The album, and the soundtrack to the feature film, IN THE CLOUD (starring Gabriel Byrne) and the soundtrack to BROADMEAD (Stanley Donwood & Mat Consume) which they have collaborated on since, makes evident the musicians’ mutual desire to push hard at the boundaries between physical and digital sound worlds – an exploration they had been pursuing individually for years. Combining his expertise and interests in science and sound, the composer, violinist and physicist, John Matthias is known for blending tradition and futurism in his music. His work has taken the form of pioneering research on Neuronal Music Technology as well as
4 acclaimed studio albums and numerous collaborations with renowned artists including Radiohead, Matthew Herbert and Coldcut. Jay Auborn’s assiduous work in musical engineering, which takes sound as yet another malleable material to be played with, has made him into a sought-after musician, record producer and sound artist working on everything from large-scale sound installations to film music. Between their shared passions and complementary skills, the musicians found a unique and undeniably bold synergy. Ghost Notes continues to be driven by this force; for the album, John Matthias and Jay Auborn gave their computer limbs and unleashed its agency, improvising alongside this new band member to create mini electronic symphonies.
Dinked Edition:
- “Rusty Solenoid” orange vinyl*
- Stanley Donwood pencil drawing art print*
- Augmented Reality Artwork Experience (scan QR code)
- 2 bonus tracks (download)*
- Hand numbered sleeve*
- Limited edition of 250*
ADDITIONAL NOTES ON THIS EDITION:
- The album cover was created by artist, Stanley Donwood, using a copper verdigris technique in which the original drawing is printed on a copper sheet and undergoes a chemical decay process.
- The original pencil drawing by Stanley Donwood is what is used for the print in our Dinked Edition. 6” x 6” with augmented reality experience information on the back.
- On the inside cover of the vinyl, the artist Mike Phillips has developed 100 new images using a Generative Algorithmic Network (GAN) - an algorithmic AI technique for which Mike Phillips used the AI to compare the front cover copper verdigris image with the pencil drawing and produce the new set of twisted forms. You can see these 100 new forms concatenated together in an Augmented Reality animation developed by Chris Price of Zubr with sound designed by John Matthias and Jay Auborn by pointing to a QR code on the reverse of the Donwood print in the Dinked vinyl edition.