Bleep

As of 2023, AI music is still very much a burgeoning scene, yet it seems Lee Gamble has both built a formula and perfected it in one go. He previously experimented with synthetic objects and deepfakes of his own speech in Flush Real Pharynx 2019-2021, a mammoth undertaking compiling three EPs situated on the dancefloor of the uncanny valley. On Models, he does a complete 180, switching from squeaky to submerged in an ode to the amorphous, where intangible voices are met by impossible instruments.

Inspired by the persistent earworms of pop songwriting, Gamble fed loose phrases into a series of neural networks, receiving ambiguous syllables that form a kind of paint by numbers lyricism. When met with these illusory yet idyllic vocals, we naturally want to fill in the blanks: something like “Your weight on my arms, and on my mind” repeats throughout the closing track, washed in misty synth fountains that spew across the album.

A ghost in the machine calls from another plane on ‘Purple, Orange’, lost in the aether. Combined with the sighing Lana Del Rey-esque cyberchanteuse of ‘XIth c. Spray’, they recall the experiments of Holly Herndon and patten. Similarly, Gamble isn’t afraid to twist these voices like any other sound: they are transported from outer realms to the beatless club pulsations of ‘Juice’, and mutate from screaming falsettos to wispy breaths on ‘Phantom Limb’. ‘Blurring’ is a round of garage brutalism, eerie yet captivating with imposing bass, sludgy concrete beats and smashing downtempo breaks, leading into the ethereal closer ‘Your Weight On My Arms’, a melange of jazzy pulled bass, heavy strums, and sputtering sparkles.

Lee Gamble is among those making creative leaps with new musical technology, bending sound and synthesis to his will on Models.