Mubert Makes Sick Beats, Humans Redundant

How hipster do you consider your music taste? Do you listen to triple j and call it a day, thinking “wow I am certified cool?” Do you spin that dial to 4ZZZ or a similar community radio station and know that you’re hearing bands that may actively avoid the limelight? Maybe you scour Soundcloud to hear the very first tracks dropped by a Kazakhstani trip hop outfit before anyone else.

But how about it listening to music that you (and only you) may only ever hear once, that hasn’t been, and never will be recorded or ever played live, and isn’t even made by a musician? Put down your chai latte and unroll those chinos, because that’s pretty f*cking underground if you ask me.

Mubert is claiming to be “the world’s first online composer of electronic music”, and it does exactly what it says on the box. When you jump onto the website, you will be treated to an endless and procedurally generated feed of electronic music. The website states that the unique stream is based on the laws of “musical theory, mathematics, and the creative experience”.

The stream is infinite, and will adapt based on your preferences and location, and, it seems that not even the creators fully know what is possible with it, as they are asking for listeners to experiment and give them feedback on their product.

If that doesn’t blow your mind, not even a little bit, then this may: it’s not that bad! It’s not exactly going to be lighting up your next veggie garden backyard bush doof, but it actually produces some interesting and cool sounds. In the rather short time we’ve been streaming, it’s dropped a pulsating trance-like number that employs a peircing trumpet, a la Pendulum’s ABC News Remix, and some liquid funk that got toes tapping on the floor.

The algorithm is limited to only six styles of electronica at this point (liquid funk, ambient, deep house, chillstep, psytrance and trap), but the idea behind the whole thing sounds like it could really go nuts if it was implemented across a broad range of genres.

Maybe it sounds like the musical equivalent of Skynet, or that the NSA has gone into the content creation market, but we here at AAA are a little bit entranced by a little psytrance!