The logic of automation has long been part of modern music production. But what happens when it no longer merely assists, but takes over the creative process and artistic execution itself? Simon Littauer’s Slopcore is one of the latest attempts to answer that question. The sound of the AI-driven project is not radical as such, but it is interesting because Slopcore is several things at once: both a concrete take on an artistic practice shaped by recent developments in AI, and a symptom of the all-encompassing data models currently being debated so intensely.
Slopcore mimics the logic of a familiar streaming platform, except that the music here is generated in real time, with the audio stream continuously adapting to the listener’s behaviour, allowing users to proactively like the output or skip ahead whenever they want. The simple interface – featuring play, pause, and a heart icon – is accompanied by a pointillistic waveform that visually emphasises how Slopcore’s aesthetic winds its way through recognisable electronic terrains of house, 2000s electronica, IDM, techno, drum’n’bass, ambient synth textures, etc. etc. Most of it is rhythmically, harmonically, and melodically coherent, without being overly experimental.
As an AI-boosted extension of Littauer’s broader musical practice – which already contains strong aleatoric and algorithmic elements – the whole thing makes perfect sense. AI is not disappearing as a technology, and the parallels to Spotify’s growing AI ambitions or platforms like Suno are obvious enough. Littauer’s position as an established electronic musician becomes entangled in a deeply commercial and opaque data architecture (read: Google’s). And the title clearly references – perhaps ironically – the concept of »AI slop«, the term used to describe the generic, soulless overproduction of images and sound flooding digital platforms. Beyond being an entertaining listening experience, Slopcore can also be seen as a relevant – perhaps, in the current climate, even courageous – contribution to an ongoing and confusing debate about artistic integrity and authenticity in a cultural world that cannot decide whether it wants to resist or simply log in.
English translation: Andreo Michaelo Mielczarek
Danish composer Sofus Forsberg has died at the age of 56. With his distinctive blend of melodic sensibility, electronic processing and rhythmic precision, he created a musical world that moved effortlessly between IDM, pop and the avant-garde.
»Music for me is my hobby, my job, my outlet, my mood, an endless source of discovering new music and new, old music, some of the best and can be some of the worst. And I love it!«
Track72 aka Tue Track aka Anders Lundby Brixen. Producer, DJ, rapper and more. Known for his role in the trio Malk De Koijn, which since the mid-1990s has created a personal universe in Danish hip-hop. Has performed in Ponyblod, Xtra Naan, Track Abdullah Rock, Booty Cologne and others.
On Wednesday, 5 August 2026, it happened again: a chord in John Cage’s Organ2/ASLSP (As Slow as Possible) changed after two and a half years. Classic FM reports.
The work was written by the American avant-garde composer John Cage in the mid-1980s. The score consists of eight pages of music, and, as the title suggests, the instruction is to play it »as slow as possible.«
»What music is to me? Where have the great feelings gone?«.
Gellért Szabó is a composer, conductor and performer based in Leipzig, Germany. His work combines contemporary composition with influences from free improvisation, noise and the expressive richness of the late nineteenth century. He is the founder and artistic director of the 23-piece Ideal Orchestra, an ensemble dedicated to large-scale experimental music of sweeping emotional intensity. Alongside this work, Szabó performs internationally with his solo project Radical Radio Show, exploring symphonic textures and immersive sound worlds through a single electric guitar and live electronics. His music is driven by a search for intensity, vulnerability and uncompromising emotional expression.
From the Culture Yard in Helsingør, ships glide past Kronborg Castle through the narrow waters of the Øresund – a reminder of the trade routes that, for centuries, have carried goods, people and power between the Nordic region and the wider world. It is an apt point of departure for the Passage Festival, and for Marie Dahl's vocal work Silk. Sugar. Sand, which explores the intertwined histories of three materials.
Silk. Sugar. Sand is a vocal performance in three acts tracing the historical journeys of these materials through colonialism, the global economy and geopolitics. Five singers from Ars Nova Copenhagen perform within a minimalist scenography consisting almost entirely of coloured light and three sets of costumes that transform throughout the performance: first silk dresses, then crinoline-like structures evoking sugar loaves, and finally grey stone-like forms suggesting accumulations of sand.
The work's central device is to translate the physical properties of these materials into vocal expression. At one moment, the elasticity of silk becomes soft, flowing polyphony; at the next, a cocoon-like electronic crackle. Sugar's crystalline structure is rendered as sharp vocal attacks – brief, whip-like cracks – as well as sweet, intimate whispers, while sand creaks and rustles, resonating with a libretto about economy and domination, violence and desire.
The performance has no conventional narrative, and the five singers portray no distinct characters, moving somewhat stiffly across the stage, as performers often do when their primary focus is on the voice. Comparisons with Hotel Pro Forma's Flammenwerfer are difficult to avoid. There, the production's rigorous aesthetic was counterbalanced by C.F. Hill's wildly expressive visual universe and Blixa Bargeld's deeply vulnerable stage presence. Those qualities are missing from Marie Dahl's carefully controlled staging, which could have benefited from more of the sensitivity and chaos that also form part of Kirsten Dehlholm's artistic legacy.
