Roundup: February 2025

Featuring Geese and generative AI

I often February a bit of a weird month, you know it’s not January but it often feels like a continuation of it. A January round 2. And the weather in Berlin has not helped abate that feeling with negative temperatures for pretty much the entire month and snow everywhere.

Which, on paper, sounds idyllic, until you realise that the city doesn’t actually salt or grit the pavements and simply walking to the shop is akin to going ice skating with all of the danger, and none of the fun.

Anyways, I thought I would try starting out with the music this week. Hope you enjoy!

Music Recs

When I first came across this 14 minute long house track, I wondered how on earth you could keep it interesting for that long. But Snad has done it with Dispo on his latest EP on Smallville Records. Fourteen minutes of dreamy bliss, it’s a wonderful track to put on in the background when doing something relaxing.

Keeping with the relaxed mood, we have Kloyds’s New Love EP. This popped up during a Spotify radio binge of Tourist, and I fell immediately in love with Kloyd’s beautiful use of chord progressions and trills that remind me heavily of Bonobo and Four Tet. Stand out track is Nothing Could’ve Made Me feat. Winifred.

With a serious change in pace, we have Pondi Map’s Lowblow up next. A wild 150bpm rager of a track, I’m addicted to the energy in its powerful buildup.

Anish Kumar has new music out this month with his AK Cuts: Vol 2 EP that’s filled with housey rollers. Kumar has gone from strength to strength in recent years and this EP really shows off what he’s capable of. From heavy stompers like Occam’s Razor, to the south-Asian inspired more disco-y groovers The Hearts Wants a Heart, the man has a skill and he’s not afraid to show it.

And finally, we have Mark Farina’s Greenhouse Construction continuous mix, which has slowly become one of my all time favourite mixes. Fun and energetic, I love putting it on when cooking or having people round.

Out And About

Generative AI (Again)

I’ve been seeing a lot of noise about generative AI in music this month and I don’t quite know how it makes me feel.

Deezer has announced that it is demonitizing AI generated music on its platform, another huge win for the industry. They claim that they are “the first (and so far only) music streaming platform to explicitly tag AI-generated music” and the “the majority of AI-music is uploaded to Deezer with the purpose of committing fraud”. They also used this post to announce the release of their latest AI-generated music detection tool and offer it up to partners.

This follows the Bandcamp annoucement from the previous month and demonstrates an incredibly negative reception to the development of the generative AI boom getting involved in the music industry. For a company to go out and claim that AI-music is primarily used for fraudulent reasons is a brave statement to make and clashes with what seems to be keen investor interest in the scene. And publicly release a tool to combat the production of more of this music.

London’s Mozart AI has closed a $6 million investment round in the past month. The company claims to be “the AI music creation studio built for your inner artist” and features functionality like MIDI sequencing and synthesiser creation. And whilst $6 million investment is peanuts compared to the billions that OpenAI seems to require to survive, it’s still a remarkably positive sign from investors that this is the next big thing.

An aside, I find the following from Mozart AI’s CEO Sundar Arvind’s rather interesting: “We’re building a world where a spark of creativity […] can be transformed into a fully produced, monetisable song”

There is a certain irony in his choice of words, what with musicians struggling to earn money from their music on streaming platforms.

What is it, exactly, that he is trying to imply with his statement on Mozart AI? That a musician’s worth is based on their monetisable output, or is it that the quantity of output is what’s holding back musicians from earning more?

But all this investor hype is at seemingly complete odds with what people actually want from the music industry, Gabi Belle’s deep dive on AI in the music scene really questions what is actually being created by these tech companies and Belle makes a point to criticise the soullessness of the music actually being produced with its complete lack of human connection.

All of this leaves with me with this uncomfortable feeling that has me questioning: what is all of this for?

One thing I will say is that the recent news of AI-music flooding Soulseek that mimics real tracks only with vocals replaced with an AI generated Homer voice is actually quite funny.

Steel City Dance Discs at Berghain

Last Friday, I hit up Berghain again with a few friends to catch the Steel City Dance Discs (SCDD) night at the fabled Panorama Bar. This was my third time in the infamous club and it was an absolute blast. The standout set was Ma Sha’s with its furious energy and pumping beats.

Sadly, though, I felt that the two iconic German hearthrobs, DJ Heartstring, fell a bit flat. Having seen them only a few months previously at Haus der Visionäre also in Berlin, it felt like there was little difference between the sets. Two of my friends agreed agreed and said it felt quite generic.

Is this hard house revival finally losing steam? I still remember Marlon Hoffstadt’s It’s That Time exploding onto the scene and being played everywhere. I was obsessed with it.

@groovesbygustedand I’m still eating it up every time #rave #hardhouse #hardgroove #dj

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And then you see content like the above by GrooveByGusted, and you really start to wonder, is this all just a trend? I’ve started going off a lot of the hard house / eurotrance (whatever you call it) coming out in more recent months, because I find that it’s all started to sound the same.

Which is a shame, as I quite like the genre. Maybe it just needs another Tony De Vit to really shake things up.

Bonus Content

Go ahead and call me a performative male if you want because I love Geese. Since coming across their latest album, Getting Killed, on NTS last year (performative) I have been binging them all year, picked up a copy on vinyl (performative), and gave their latest Tiny Desk Concert a listen (performative). So, if you like their sound as much as I do, I’d check this out as it’s a lot of fun. And for those asking (probably no one), Taxes is my favourite track from the album.

I picked up tickets to Dekmantel again this year (can’t wait to go back), and I’ve started my research into who’s playing. Started with Ellen Allien and Dr Rubintein’s b2b mix from Whole Festival 2025 and its energy was a real boost in the gym.

My YouTube recommendations have been getting better and better over the past couple of months, and this little gem popped up talking about the Hoover sound which should be no stranger to anyone who’s into electronic music. A fascinating dive into history, I’ve been getting more and more synthesiser recommendations recently and I’m started to worry that my bank account isn’t ready for the inevitable modular synthesis addiction that’s brewing.

And finally, I’ve had the pleasure of coming across Logan Daniel McDonald on YouTube in recent weeks and he uploads these gorgeous, ambient soundscapes that I’ve been whacking on whilst at work. They’re absolute delights and I highly recommend checking them out. McDonald’s latest is a live recording from a park!

Until Next Time

I was out a fair bit since being back in Berlin and I’ve ticked off most of the major clubs now in the city, so I may start dipping into talking about them in a bit more detail soon. Including Berghain. There’s a real difference in the clubbing life between my hometown of London and Berlin and it’s tough to compare them like for like. Both have their upsides and downsides.

But until then, enjoy the music, and I’ll be seeing you soon.