This is making no sense to the average listener

2025 Mix 27: Scanning half-year recommendations, plus CMAT, Flavien Berger, Aya Nakamura, and the usual global grab-bag

No A.I. image generation necessary—just move to Morocco

Another week of tedious discourse about A.I., and me with no other ideas to expound on, or at least ones that I’m not writing other things about already. I haven’t really updated my take from two years ago:

I think A.I.’s influence is going to be like any other technology — disruptive in a lot of ways we don’t see coming, not disruptive in a lot of ways we currently predict, and the bringer of a bunch of random effects that wind up being a huge part of the “real story” when the dust settles. Should be weird!

Case in point: the first English-language A.I. controversy has already exhausted itself, via the brief boom of morbid curiosity in The Velvet Sundown, a seemingly all-A.I. band that a large group of (justified) haters seems to have Streisand Effect-ed to number one on the UK viral charts.

There is now a matryoshka of fakers and imposters—a self-appointed “spokesperson” is not affiliated with a band and was perpetuating what has been confirmed as a hoax once removed. Still not clear how much of the “band’s” music (a style guide is emerging that refers to A.I. bands with “it” pronouns) was fully A.I.-generated and how much was A.I.-shaped sounds molded onto an existing songwriting exoskeleton.

These seem like new and treacherous waters. There is some evidence that when music generator Suno’s A.I. music isn’t being used to augment existing building blocks (melodies, chord progressions, vocal tracks transformed into new voices, etc.), it winds up just directly plagiarizing existing music in its database, like in the example of Timbaland thinking his prompts were responsible for a song that in reality was taken wholesale from a different producer.

The first major A.I. music controversy I’m aware of, though, seems to have been much quieter in American and English-speaking press, though. That would be “YAJU&U,” a filthy TikTok novelty from Japan earlier this year that was documented at the time by Patrick St. Michel and later followed up in a Kieran Press-Reynolds column in Pitchfork.

So far I’ve been pretty good at spotting the little remaining divots in the A.I. uncanny valley—there’s a certain telltale synthetic “rough” sound to the current generation of fully A.I. generated music that sounds like a subtle tape warp, one that just sounds a little off. But I don’t doubt that sometime soon even these remaining vestiges of the valley will disappear.

I find it difficult to put too much stock in all of this yet, though. Generative A.I. isn’t out of the 5-year window of “let’s see how this goes” phase of newly-overhyped technology for me to have strong opinions. I find it reassuring, as I take deep breaths during this self-imposed intellectual probationary period, that most of the music it’s currently generating is usually bland and/or borderline incompetent. (I may have flown right past Velvet Sundown in my weekly skimming before they went viral.) But I don’t doubt that at some point a song generated mostly through A.I. will be good, and not just by underlining how “bad” A.I.-generated art is (like “10 DRUNK CIGARETTES,” which I have a hard time believing was fully A.I.-generated anyway). I just don’t think we’re there yet; like many tech hype things there’s some big story on the horizon that it’s too soon to fully understand.

Long term, I think Star Trek already showed us the way—A.I. generated writing and media will replace bureaucratic reports no one wanted to write anyway, and will also be used to read and synthesize those reports, while all the academics and poets produce original work from the material security of military service or being on the dole. Seems plausible.

---

Previous 2025 Mixes

Tidal || YouTube

1. CMAT: The Jamie Oliver Petrol Station
Ireland

I’ve been lukewarm on CMAT for most of her career and have chalked it up to a taste thing rather than anything specific about her music. (I suspect she does images well but connects them together less well, but don’t know her well enough to say for sure.) This one immediately jumped out at me as some other person’s idea of a masterpiece, like “A&W” was for Lana Del Rey—an artist who I will likely never click with nonetheless at the top of her game. Still prefer the wordless whoah’s in the last minute and a half.

2. Flavien Berger, La Brume: Turquoise (La fête noire)
France

Meanwhile, I suspect Flavien Berger’s ultrasmooth jazz-pop (flute solo inclusive!) appeals to me very specifically, maybe a little too specifically. No missing cat named Satan this time out, and I can’t find a translation to check whether or not there is any turquoise mermaid vomit in this one, as there was in his 2015 “La fête noire.”

3. Blackpanda, Miranda Santizo: Ella es
Spain

Gauzy Spanish hypopop goes nominally hyper in the home stretch, but before that it adds more evidence that everyone needs to incorporate more flamenco handclaps whenever possible.

4. DJ Kawest, Aya Nakamura: Chouchou
France

A solid collaboration between DJ Kawest and Aya Nakamura—provides more texture than I sometimes get from Nakamura but less texture than I want from Kawest. Sounds just fine in the middle.

5. Cannelle: Fille
France

French pop that’s equally cool (as in temperature) and annoying—it’s no big deal to have one’s cake and eat it too these days, but it’s still rare to do it in a moonbounce.

6. Güner Künier: Sabahlar
Turkey

7. Lexie Liu: Pop Girl
China

8. Say Now: Brick by Brick
UK

Three recommendations from Tom Ewing’s annual half-year crowdsource for songs of the year, always a strong collection. Geoff recommends bohemian Turkish synth-pop from Güner Künier, which pairs well with Argentine rocker Marilina Bertoldi’s Para Quien Trabajas Vol. 1. Iaian Mew recommends Lexie Liu’s so-meta-it’s-just-dumb-again “Pop Girl.” Tamsyn Elle reminds me to check out another British girl group successfully reviving millennial R&B (along with FLO), and they don’t disappoint.

9. ZVRI f. J-Smash Kane Keid, K. Keed, Lowfeye: Bhenga
South Africa

A gqom-pop banger from my South African playlists, which I have diversified enough at this point to get about as much non-amapiano as amapiano proper. Next week I have some time to stretch out with an amapiano section—but I’m more excited about nine minutes of bagpipe drone.

10. ATTNWH0RE, Vayda, KARRAHBOOO: fAWK
US

Have been quietly rooting for Vayda to get bigger after “Bingo.” Wouldn’t have bet on getting more consistent haunted pixie rap from Myaap, whom I’d associated with bounce music but seems to be having a moment by figuring out that you can also have that cake and eat it too.

11. 2yu: Chuunibyou
Malaysia

From pink moonbounces to pink arcade cabinets — in and out in a flash, like a game you lose immediately but don’t mind because it still only costs a quarter.

12. Moyka: 24/7
Norway

The sort of Scandopop that I feel like I used to encounter much more in my playlists. This is a mere echo of something like Margaret Berger’s “I Feed You My Love,” but I’ll take the echo.

13. Yousti: Day Dreamer
Japan

J-pop from a former Sakurazaka46 member. If you need more information than that, you’ve come to the wrong newsletter!

14. Aria Bela: Wifey
Mexico

What I suppose I’ll need to hyphenate into post-PostPantheress arrives in Mexico, still sounds good many years, a few continents, and much less heat later.

15. Zerrydl: My Amigo
Nigeria

So…any idea what’s happened to Nigerian pop this year? Has its devil’s bargain with amapiano short-circuited its own development? It is approximately nowhere on the global charts, and the Nigerian charts seem to have pulled away a bit, too, a few breakthroughs like Shallipoppi notwithstanding. But I could be totally wrong here, might need to do a regional dive soon to see what I’ve been missing. (I should be doing this more anyway, but I haven’t really needed to — as it turns out, there’s a lot of music out there.)

16. Akiyama Ritsuki: Byo-ki
Japan

A Japanese power-pop trifle — a head nod in 2 minutes or less or your money back.

17. Xesi: Ngày Đẹp Trời Để Chia Tay
Vietnam

One thing I find interesting about the rapid development (at least from my outsider vantage) of Vietnamese pop over the last five or so years is that the ferment has happened pretty evenly across the board, with multiple scenes all seeming more attuned to global pop as time goes on. This song is practically A-pop, but still brings out some of the distinctiveness of V-pop in language and melody, which I am not at all prepared to dive into for both time and ignorance reasons.

18. Lina Guessoussi: Ghyab
Morocco

Mellow indie Moroccan pop, an easy win for Golden Beatology of the week.

19. Woodfield Rd Allstars f. Donovan Kingjay: The Beat on the Street
UK

20. Charlotte de Witte, Amelie Lens: One Mind
Belgium

Two more recommendations from the half-year thread that didn’t fit higher up in the mix. The first is some meticulously reconstructed reggae from the Original Gravity label via Aidan Byrne. Then some Proper Techno from Belgium via Kat Stevens.

21. Efterklang f. Mabe Fratti: Ese Día
Denmark/Guatemala

I found Danish chamber-pop group Efterklang while doing research for a 2008 theme in a music league (“Caravan”), and on this Mabe Fratti collaboration they’ve stretched the chamber out into a pleasing drone. You might call them the DJ Kawest and Aya Nakamura of baroque global cosmopolitan indie pop, if you are a total weirdo.

22. Cheyada: ฝันนิรันดร์
Thailand

And let’s end things where the indie-pop is really thriving — over in Thailand, where they know how to go soft without turning everything to mush.

***

That’s it! Until next time, remember that I only include all of these typos and minor errors to justify all of the em dashes and still remind you of my humanity.

—Dave Moore (the other one)

Title from CMAT: The Jamie Oliver Petrol Station