SUPERSPACE | VINYL RECORD (LP)

Superspace is the name of the new super duo consisting of Maurice Summen and Tom Hessler aka Der Assistent. Together they produce electronic pop music with cheap AI applications, outrageously expensive vintage equipment and a sample aesthetic reminiscent of the 90s. Superspace stands here as a placeholder for a tech-savvy, retro-futuristic heterotopia that can be located anywhere or nowhere. Their first, self-titled album will be released on June 27, 2025. The two also produce a monthly sonic fiction mixtape on ByteFM with the lovely title " Radio Superspace " in which they give insights into their musical influences, which they have developed a mischievous joy in while making music together: ballistic beats, house, dub, new wave, electro-pop, score or ambient descents. "All is one (In Superspace)" But in the beginning was the word! "Superspace" is a term that the two musicians - without knowing it beforehand - appropriated from John Wheeler's theoretical physics and into social reality. All the tracks on this album were created in dialogue with the machine. Vocal & melody prompts, including all the welcome glitches and flaws that were on board in the freemium versions of OpenAI & Co in their Sturm & Drang phases for market launch in winter 2022/23 and which in themselves already seem retro. Summen and Der Assistent used the resulting material as sample sources for their compositions. Just as in other times they would have been extracted from old records, films or radio broadcasts. Naturally, the process of such (digital) appropriation raises questions. Rather abstract questions about ownership of production resources and information on the one hand, and authorship and authorship on the other, but also very concrete questions of an artistic and aesthetic nature: After all, who can answer with 100% certainty whether those voices on the album, which sometimes sound astonishingly like humming, aren't actually AI trained to sound like humming? What kind of reality are we even talking about when we talk about pop? Hasn't this always been a second-order reality? And is disruptive technology once again becoming a quasi-nature, perhaps a third nature? How does the AI react when it listens to what we've made of it's contributions? What learning processes, indeed what aesthetics, emerge after the AI has listened to itself speaking and singing? And perhaps also measured the success or failure of it's tracks? And what conclusions does it draw from this? And what control do we have over it? Or rather, do we have any control over it at all? Tom Hessler, on the other hand, designed the beats for "Superspace" in what today seems like an almost analogue approach, based on classic "Future Music" CDs, which were the gold standard for sample-based bedroom producers in the 90s. Summen and Hessler layered sounds from a machine park of old Moogs, 303s, 808s, and DX-7 grooves, melodies, and basslines onto them. "The sound wasn't a plan; we had tons of vocal samples from the AI, Tom's beats from the sample CDs, and all the synthesizers; the rest just fell into place, " says Summen. And it makes perfect sense that "Superspace" now sounds like a retro-futuristic echo of the 90s (everything from KLF to DJ Shadow, Massive Attack to Happy Mondays, Ninja Tune to Mo' Wax) - and yet sounds astonishingly present: uncanny and trippy, hopelessly dated and hopeful for the future at the same time. And like a lot of fun and double-edged humor. And not least a reminder that the old modern promise of a better world has not yet been fulfilled, quite the opposite. In any case, this album contains ten extremely finely tuned, very groovy, soothing, and definitely danceable tunes that deal with the omnipotence fantasies of others ("Superspace Business"), everyday excessive demands ("Superspace Blues") or the first cheese in space ("First Cheese in Superspace").