Few weeks ago, during a family trip to the restaurant, I overheard my brother saying that he couldn’t get tickets to Khruangbin’s show in NYC. That Khruangbin?
Yes, that exact Khruangbin – one I heard about through the years all without realizing how big they got. Today I recieved another reminder about the band’s growing success in the form of NY Times piece. Yes, they made it – and made it without trying too hard to fit themselves into any trends. An incredible feat, practically unheard of in an era of streaming.
An exciting event, to say the least. And its not about Khruangbin growing through their uniqueness, but also other bands crossing over into the mainstream – Thee Oh Sees, King Gizzard and Lizard Wizard et al. Bands with identity of their own rather than simple trend-chasers. To me, that’s another victory given how hard streaming tried to make music faceless 2010 onwards.
Coinciding with NY Times piece was a recent chorus of older artist speaking out against streaming – list ranging from Sheryl Crow to Shirley Manson to Trent Reznor. Not everyone joined the said chorus (looking at you Neil Young / Joni Mitchell), but those that did had a rather vicious choice of words
It’s not that they’re hostile to them existing, it’s just that they don’t give a fuck about them existing. We’re talking about a capitalist system and all they care about is profit. Not only do they care about profit, but they want more profit. Nothing works like that in the long-term. You can’t make infinite wealth. Things reach their apex and they can’t go beyond that.
These record labels are unwilling to accept that there is a limit to what a musician or an artist can make for them. They’re created this system that’s akin to throwing so many bodies at this problem – one will get to the other side, many will not, and they’ll pump enough money into the lucky artist to reach global saturation and squeeze as many pennies from it as possible.
And I can’t help but agree with Shirley in this case. Its not just Spotify but the whole system chasing after infinite growth that makes me sick to the stomach. With the coming improvements in AI the question of compensation might become even more pronounced – take a look at what Suno is doing and tell me their work won’t be used soon by record labels everywhere
Khruangbin won by being authentic and true to themselves, not to mention the decades of work. The example of AI-generated blues piece may not sound bad by itself, but its still a crude replica at heart. It lacks something – perhaps a misplaced chord or some random ambience in the middle, something that an experience human composer could easily throw in and upset the apple cart.
There’s no guarantee that AI won’t learn how to add human emotion to music it generates. But it might take decades or it may never happen altogether – and in the meantime the only way to fight algorithms / AI will remain being true to oneself and not blindly chasing the trends of the day/being a slave to tech. Its an uphill battle, but if Khruangbin won it there’s plenty of hope for anyone with a vision.
A La Sala by Khruangbin is out now on Dead Oceans