Throwing Snow announces new album Dragons with lead cut "Brujita"

"Burjita" is the first taster of Throwing Snow's Dragons album, and follows last month's "Lithics" track.

Tones says of the new song, ""Brujita" is about the breaking of aural tradition and the suppression of cunning women and men. It’s a eulogy to lost folk wisdom."

He developed the neural network for Dragons with artist/designer and technologist Matt Woodham. The changes in the music triggers changes in the moving images. Tones explains, "Everything that happens musically triggers the algorithm to do something. This isn’t controlled or predictable, and the music becomes an instruction for the algorithm to make its own decisions about datasets, images, speed, movement and other manipulations."

Dragons will follow Tones' 2018 album Loma, and sees Throwing Snow explore the purpose of music from the beginning of human history. "We have Palaeolithic minds but find ourselves in an increasingly complex and interconnected world," Tones says. "Music and art have always been ritualised as a tool for memory, knowledge and emotion, and humans make sense of existence by using tools. Songs were tools of understanding, passed down from our ancestors. Now, things are complex and interrelated, so we can’t use that ancestral knowledge, and need to invent new tools – that’s where machine learning comes into it."

He adds of the album, "I’m into putting music back into history. I want to make you think about what music is, what its purpose has been. I’m asking about the scientific aspect to folklore and ancient knowledge, and looking at why it’s still useful. This album is a doorway – if you choose to listen like that."

Tracklist:

1. Dragons
2. Elder
3. Halos
4. Lithurgy
5. Traveller
6. Purr
7. Brujita
8. Equitem Nocte
9. Ochre
10. Dragons (Part 2)