The US trumpeter shares a supernatural LA noir created with the help of generative AI for a track from her latest album Power Vibe
Steph Richards often experiments with environmental factors and pre-decided systems in her improvising projects. In 2020, the US trumpeter released Supersense, for which she collaborated with Detroit based artist Sean Raspet to create a series of scents that Richards and her fellow players surrounded themselves with and responded to in the studio. Wire subscribers can read an interview with Richards discussing the album in The Wire 441 via the online library of back issues.
Richards’ new album Power Vibe – which features Gerald Cleaver on drums, Joshua White on piano, Stomu Takeishi on bass and electric guitars, and Max Jaffe on sensory electronics and drumset – is built around a “series of musical cues that, when played, redirect all the players to move into a new structure.”
The musician applies a similarly systematic approach to this music video, directed by Ghyll. “[It’s] a supernatural LA noir,” Richards explains, “created with the help of generative AI which creates video clips with the guidance of text and video prompts. The process is not unlike panning for gold — searching for brief inspired moments in the vast stretches of its characteristically shifting and jumbled output.”
Power Vibe is released by Northern Spy. Read Phil Freeman's review of the album in The Wire 483 or online with a Wire subscription.
