Drowned in Sound

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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Drowned in Sound

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

Did Sean ask a member of the House of Lords whether the House of Lords should even exist? No. Did he get into proportional representation? Also no...

Helena Wadia returns to co-host, and rather than a straight interview this is proper yap of an episode, with Sean thinking out loud about everything that didn't make it into last week's conversation with Lord Kevin Brennan on the fan-led review of live music, and why, when you've got fifty recommendations and about an hour, you have to choose your battles.

They get into why Andy Burnham becoming Prime Minister changed the shape of the conversation, and what it means that he's a shareholder in Music Venue Properties. They compare how differently society treats football fandom versus music fandom, from workplace leniency during the World Cup to Germany's cultural vouchers, and ask why a nighttime economy built around music doesn't get the same institutional understanding.

Along the way: Bill Drummond's old campaign for a "no music day", Paris Hilton's unlikely transformation into a genuine political force, and a proper, honest conversation about how they each actually prep for an interview, what questions to ask first, how much to assume the listener already knows, and why every job now seems to come with the shadow of "but will it clip."

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.

This week, Sean and Helena share their midyear playlists. Sean's has got Massive Attack and Tom Waits, Sofia Isella, PVA, and Art School Girlfriend on it. Helena's has Matt Berninger's strange, brilliant new solo single 'Martini Me Fatso', Naomi In Blue's debut, and Olivia Rodrigo's new record.

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.

 

Referenced In This Episode

Last week's conversation with Lord Kevin Brennan on the fan-led review: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/what-can-music-fans-expect-from-the-pm-andy-burnham/id1037405920?i=1000778324142, on YouTube: https://youtu.be/IFhUww0DTvs, or wherever you get your podcasts: http://drownedinsound.org/podcasts

Read Mark Davyd on Andy Burnham's stake in Music Venue Properties and a night out in Atherton: https://markdavyd.substack.com/p/a-night-out-in-atherton

Naomi In Blue's debut single 'Naive': https://naomiinblue.bandcamp.com/

Matt Berninger's new single 'Martini Me Fatso': https://stereogum.com/2505525/matt-berninger-martini-me-fatso/music

'Boots on the Ground', Massive Attack featuring Tom Waits: https://massiveattack.bandcamp.com/album/boots-on-the-ground

Bill Drummond's No Music Day: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Music_Day

Galaxy Brain: How Short-Form Clips Took Over the Internet: https://podcasts.apple.com/am/podcast/galaxy-brain/id1378618386

John Graham, the world's first Minister for Music (and Transport), NSW Australia: https://www.nsw.gov.au/nsw-government/ministers/minister-for-transport-arts-music-and-night-time-economy

John Graham on the Sydney Opera House noise changes, "no longer will noise levels be dictated by the bedtimes of the residents": https://www.nsw.gov.au/departments-and-agencies/dciths/ministerial-media-releases/changes-coming-to-sydney-opera

Hanna Kahlert on "every job is clips now": https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/why-your-favourite-bands-fans-might-not-be-real/id1037405920?i=1000775834659

Art School Girlfriend on the podcast earlier this year: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/why-does-electronic-music-sound-like-shoegaze-art-school/id1037405920?i=1000754413709

Ella from PVA on the podcast earlier this year: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/why-hope-over-fear-trumps-no-music-on-a-dead-planet/id1037405920?i=1000747892636

Helena Wadia also co-hosts the Media Storm podcast: https://mediastormpodcast.com/about-us/

This episode was recorded at The Shure Experience Centre, London.

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

Produced and edited by Sean Adams.

00:00:00 - Cold open: the things we never thought we'd cover 00:00:16 - Welcome back, Helena 00:00:41 - Recapping the Lord Brennan interview 00:09:17 - Qobuz and the midyear playlists 00:12:10 - Bill Drummond's No Music Day 00:16:33 - What if music was treated like football 00:19:39 - Andy Burnham's DJ sets and Paris Hilton 00:26:42 - How we actually prep for an interview 00:34:32 - Idea: politicians' favourite bands on election flyers 00:39:00 - Wrap up and thanks to Lord Brennan