Drowned in Sound

Drowned in Sound is thrilled to introduce a new series which will be appearing in this feed. How Music Can Save the World is hosted by Shain Shapiro and produced by DiS founder Sean Adams, who pops up at the end of each episode.

Before Shain found himself speaking at the UN, developing music policy for mayors like Sadiq Khan, and organising his own conference, he was a contributor to Drowned in Sound, so it feels like a wonderful full circle moment to be creating this podcast together.

The season is a companion to Shain's forthcoming second book by the same name. He explains:

"It's my case for using music to help tackle five big issues: economic and international development, healthcare, the climate emergency, crisis and recovery, and our collective morality.

It's the book I've wanted to write for years. Deliberately optimistic, grounded in data and evidence, it shows what music can do if we listen to it differently."

Shain introduces the series in this little 5min explainer trailer ahead of the first episode arriving later this week.

Pre-order How Music Can Save the World

Fill in the form Shain mentions in this episode

Follow this podcast's new Instagram

Follow Shain on LinkedIn

Follow Shain on Substack

In part two of our conversation with journalists Effie Webb and Harriet Williamson, we move beyond who created Danny Bones and ask what his existence means for music itself.

We discuss the irony of a far-right AI rapper borrowing from Black music, the response from musicians, and what happens when technology can imitate creative work at scale with little to no consequence.

We get into copyright, the devaluing of human creative labour, Spotify’s response to AI artists, whether Danny Bones is an outlier or an early sign of what’s coming, and finally, what music fans can do to help musicians, songwriters and artists to remain at the centre of music.

The Drowned in Sound podcast is presented in partnership with Qobuz, the pioneering high-quality music streaming and download platform for music enthusiasts and audiophiles.

Each week we curate playlists on Qobuz, featuring our favourite records, artists, and the themes we explore on the show.
Visit drownedinsound.org/playlists to discover new music in rich Hi-Res lossless quality and start your 30-day free trial of Qobuz.

This week's playlist is songs that give you a bit of pride in where you are from. Amongst the picks, Harriet chose 'White Man in Hammersmith Palais' by The Clash and Effie chose 'LDN' by Lily Allen, two London songs, one of them about race and punk and reggae and the other about what the city actually looks like underneath, which is a fairly pointed answer to a record trading on national pride. 
What would you add? You can email us on podcasts@drownedinsound.org

Referenced In This Episode:

More than a third of new uploads to Apple Music are now AI-generated, reported by Music Ally:
More than a third of Apple Music uploads are now AI music

Australia banning fully AI-generated songs from the ARIA charts, announced two days before we recorded:
AI-generated music to be banned from the ARIA charts

Spotify’s AI persona labelling, announced this month:
Spotify introduces an AI persona label and keeps AI-generated artists out of recommendations by default

‘Harbu Darbu’ by Ness and Stilla, the track mentioned in the episode, which calls for the deaths of Bella Hadid, Dua Lipa and Mia Khalifa and topped the Israeli streaming charts:
Harbu Darbu

Effie Webb, Bureau of Investigative Journalism
Effie Webb’s profile

Harriet Williamson, Novara Media
Novara Media

Recorded at The Shure Experience Centre, London.

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Produced by Georgia Mooney.

What does it take to rack up five million YouTube views in ten months? In this case: a rapper who doesn’t exist, a political party paying thousands for AI-generated videos, and algorithms remarkably good at turning anger into attention.

This week, Sean is joined by Effie Webb of the Bureau of Investigative Journalism and Harriet Williamson of Novara Media, who have spent months investigating Danny Bones.

So, who is Danny Bones? An AI-generated British rapper created by the Node Project, whose songs and videos mix nationalism, immigration politics and visions of a broken Britain. He’s amassed millions of views and streams and "performed" at a Tommy Robinson rally. This manufactured persona has begun bleeding into real-world politics.

In part one, Effie and Harriet explain how they uncovered the Node Project’s links to far-right party Advance UK, and ultimately discovered the real people behind it: a music producer and a video producer working in the arts. We discuss what far right actually means, why those described that way reject the term, and Harriet’s theory that the Danny Bones aesthetic looks like somebody watched This Is England, thought it looked cool and missed everything else about it.

We also get into Danny Bones’ extraordinary algorithmic growth, whether reporting on him risks boosting his platform, the economics of streams versus political commissions, and what happens when an entirely fictional "artist" starts intervening in real elections. 

The Drowned in Sound podcast is presented in partnership with Qobuz, the pioneering high-quality music streaming and download platform for music enthusiasts and audiophiles.
Each week we curate playlists on Qobuz, featuring our favourite records, artists, and the themes we explore on the show.

Visit drownedinsound.org/playlists to discover new music in rich Hi-Res lossless quality and start your 30-day free trial of Qobuz.

This week's playlist is songs that give you a bit of pride in where you are from. Amongst the picks, Harriet chose 'White Man in Hammersmith Palais' by The Clash and Effie chose 'LDN' by Lily Allen, two London songs, one of them about race and punk and reggae and the other about what the city actually looks like underneath, which is a fairly pointed answer to a record trading on national pride.
What would you add? You can email us on podcasts@drownedinsound.org

Referenced In This Episode:

The first investigation, the AI rapper funded by a far-right party, by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism:
Meet the AI rapper funded by a far-right party

And Novara Media's version of the same story:
Meet the AI Rapper Working for the Far-Right

How the project turned the coverage into membership tiers and a crypto wallet within days:
The hate economy in action: how an AI rapper tried to cash in on our coverage

Effie's day at Tommy Robinson's rally, QR codes, crypto and an AI rapper:
A day at Tommy Robinson's rally: QR codes, crypto and an AI rapper

The story that named the two men behind it:
Revealed: the music producer and animator behind far-right AI rapper Danny Bones

And at Novara Media:
Revealed: The Chart-Topping Music Producer and Animator Behind a Far-Right AI Rapper

The Daily Mail's collaboration with the Bureau, which is where the platform responses live:
Read the archived article

Ben Habib winding up Advance UK to clear the way for Rupert Lowe's Restore Britain:
Ben Habib winds up Advance UK to clear the way for Restore Britain

The Gorton and Denton by-election result in full:
UK Parliament election results

 

Effie Webb, Bureau of Investigative Journalism
Effie Webb’s profile

Harriet Williamson, Novara Media
Novara Media

Recorded at The Shure Experience Centre, London.

Sign up to the DiS newsletter:
Drowned in Sound

Produced by Georgia Mooney.

In this week's episode Sean sits down with Steven Ansell, the singing drummer of Blood Red Shoes.

They have known each other for around twenty five years now, since Sean first saw Steven's old band Cat On Form playing to a room of skinny, topless Fugazi obsessives in Brighton.

Blood Red Shoes formed in Brighton in 2004, Steven on drums and vocals, Laura-Mary Carter on guitar and vocals, and released one of their first singles on the Drowned in Sound label. Twenty years on, they're still one of the more interesting duos working in guitar music, a band whose sound has been chased by plenty of others since (Royal Blood, for one, used to come and watch them). Their songs keep finding new listeners in places that have nothing to do with the traditional music industry, the Scott Pilgrim soundtrack years ago, more recently Directive 8020, the horror game that features their track 'Dead Air'.

However, delves into their seventh record. Stay Lonely, which is out 18th September on V2 Records. The record features the single 'Screams', and it's the first Blood Red Shoes album the two of them have made entirely on their own, no outside producer, no outside mixer, nobody else touching it.

The conversation gets into how a band that's been almost wordlessly instinctual for two decades actually functions day to day, who sings what and why.

Steven also produces for other artists, including Brighton duo Arxx and Circe, and co-runs the Jazz Life label with Laura-Mary, who records solo too (her debut album, Bye Bye Jackie, came out last year).

As with every episode, Sean asks Steven the question he now puts to every guest: how would you spend five hundred million pounds to improve music?

The Drowned in Sound podcast is presented in partnership with Qobuz, the high-quality music streaming and download platform for music enthusiasts and audiophiles. Each week we curate playlists on Qobuz, featuring our favourite records, artists, and the themes we explore on the show.

Visit https://drownedinsound.org/playlists/ to discover new music in rich Hi-Res lossless quality and start your 30-day free trial of Qobuz at https://qobuz.com/dis.

Produced and edited by the team at Tell Studio.

Recorded, engineered and hosted by Sean Adams (seaninsound.com) at Polygon Portal, Soho. Polygon Portal's immersive listening room is back for Season Two from October, with Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon, Pixies' Bossanova and De La Soul's 3 Feet High and Rising among the album playback sessions on their listings, well worth a look if you're in London.

Sign up to the DiS newsletter: http://drownedinsound.org

What's the best place to stand in the Electric Ballroom if you're under five foot five and don't fancy a six foot stranger appearing in front of you two minutes before stage time? Helena Wadia has worked this out for pretty much every venue in London, and this week's episode exists mostly so Drowned in Sound founder Sean Adams could catch up with his co-host to to yap about gigs.

This week's episode is a bit of a format experiment for us (we'd love you to send your feedback to podcasts@drownedinsound.org) because Sean's been buried in The Anchoress album campaign and Helena's been living her best gig life.

Helena co-hosts the Media Storm podcast, and normally you'll find her asking sharper questions than she gets asked here. She also, by her own admission, keeps a proper mental log of every National setlist, twenty two shows and counting, which is why she was drafted onto Gig Pigs, the podcast where comedians take a comedian to a gig, for their National episode with Stuart Laws. Worth a listen for the fuller history: S2 Ep7: The National with Stuart Laws and Helena Wadia.

The conversation also gets into Los Campesinos! twenty year celebration at the Electric Ballroom,  Robyn selling out the O2 without being an obvious household name, My Chemical Romance's Black Parade in full at Wembley Stadium and the tears that came with it, and Matt Berninger's solo show with RonBoy in tow.

Along the way the pair discuss obstructed view seats that turn out to be the best seats in the house, the ethics of a no-view audio-only ticket, seeing Prince, and why nobody's worked out how to tell you your friends are stood four rows in front of you.

The Drowned in Sound podcast is presented in partnership with Qobuz, the pioneering high-quality music streaming and download platform for music enthusiasts and audiophiles. Each week we curate playlists on Qobuz, featuring our favourite records, artists, and the themes we explore on the show.

Visit https://drownedinsound.org/playlists/ to discover new music in rich Hi-Res lossless quality and start your 30-day free trial of Qobuz at https://qobuz.com/dis.

Produced and edited by Sean Adams.

Co-hosted by Helena Wadia, who also co-hosts the Media Storm podcast: https://mediastormpodcast.com/about-us/

Recorded at The Shure Experience Centre, London.

Sign up to the DiS newsletter: http://drownedinsound.org