[Source: Reuters]
Chase & Status have spent more than two decades chasing the next sound, amassing more than 2 billion streams on Spotify along the way.
Their latest album, released earlier this month, “Generic Everything,” is driven by a different concern: the fear that technology is making culture more uniform.
The British electronic music duo, Saul Milton (known as Chase) and Will Kennard (Status), say the record emerged from conversations about artificial intelligence, social media and the growing pressure for artists to follow established formulas rather than forge their own path. Still, they reject the idea that AI poses an existential threat to creativity.
Speaking to Reuters in London, the pair discuss originality, technological change and why they believe individuality will become more valuable in an age of algorithms.
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Your new album is called “Generic Everything.” It’s a provocative title for a duo that’s spent two decades building a distinctive sound. What does it mean?
Kennard: It sounds like an angry statement, but it wasn’t really meant that way. When we were making the record, we found the rate of change in technology, the impact of social media and the fast-changing pace of AI really overwhelming and confusing. We spoke to other artists and friends who felt the same.
The danger of that was that our own work started to sound a bit lazy and a bit generic. We could see that in other people’s work as well. It felt like creativity was being squeezed into a singular space.
“Generic Everything” was a phrase we wrote on a whiteboard in the studio. It was a reminder to think differently and not always take the easy route. It became a personal mission to avoid the pitfalls of just sounding like everything else.