Jon Irabagon
Server Farm
Irabbagast Records
Artificial Intelligence is coming whether we like it or not. Will it be a good thing or bad thing is anybody’s guess. Filipino-American composer and sax player Jon Irabagon has been thinking about AI a lot recently. His latest album, Server Farm, addresses the promise and peril of AI across a five-song suite. While no real AI was utilized on Server Farm, Irabagon decided to mimic the AI process in his wiring. He delved deep into the catalogues of his chosen bandmates, all of them bandleaders and composers in their own rights, and mined them for repeated phrases and motifs particular to each musician. He then repurposed these as the basis for his own composition, tailored for this specific ensemble and designed to provide them as much freedom as possible.
“Co-location” opens the set with the organic sounds of Levy Lorenzo’s kulintang, a traditional set of gongs from the Philippines. The rest of the ensemble comes in like a juiced-up big band having a tumble. The piece moves from bucolic ensemble passages to free improvisation sections emulating the order and chaos of the natural world.
“Routers” plays with the notion of rhythm. The song develops with the various musicians playing solos at cross rhythms while the full theme emerges. To add a sci-fi element to the piece, Irabagon played a sax solo for the entire length of the song, then in post production ran the sound through effects pedals, chopped it up, moved sections around, reversed sounds, and otherwise modified his sound.
The 17-minute “Singularities” marks the point where AI begins to take over. The piece begins with the band playing together harmoniously, but by the midpoint things begin to get a bit messy. Individual musicians fall out of the organized composition to disrupt the flow and challenge the orthodoxy.
“Graceful Exit” offers a moment of calm. Irabagon said he wanted to show beauty still exists among the chaos. The calm ballad is still disrupted by electronic sounds, reminding us that the machines are still there. “Spy” closes the suite with an uneasiness recalling a David Lynch film. Mazz Swift sings a poem written in the pandemic that disturbingly floats above the quiet, disjointed instrumental work. The human element is now the bit floating in and around the machine landscape.
The conflict between the human and technological is a theme Irabagon plans to continue to explore. He plans to continue using technology as it develops and may in the future even use real AI.
