Velvet Sunset: Ghost Band without Proof of Life

Have you heard of velvet sunsets? It’s kind of like underground velvet, except that underground velvet is absolutely real, and the jury is still out of the velvet sunset.

The band’s photos look very obvious – too clean, not weird enough texture, strangely, but adds over 372,000 monthly listeners on Spotify. Their resume reads that they are “quietly compelling” and use those weird, inconspicuous metaphors so common in AI-generated texts, such as comparing the band’s music to “the smell that suddenly brings you back to a place you didn’t expect.”

Their creatures show that it is composed of singer and Mellotron player Gabe Farrow, guitarist Lennie West, Synth Player Milo Raines and percussionist Orion “Rio” Del Mar. And, not that social media accounts must be proof of life, but that none of them have Instagram, Tiktok or Facebook accounts – neither is the band itself. In fact, none of the band members seem to have a fragment on the internet.

The songs on Spotify are also somewhat suspicious. Most artists will have multiple personal credibility, but the honors for every song on Spotify are written by Velvet Sundown, “by” and “Source.” No producers listed.

“Velvet Sunset is not trying to restore the past,” their Spotify resume reads. “They are rewriting it. They sound like memories of times that never really happened…but they make it real in some way.”

Are they playing with us? I listen to the band myself, and it does sound generated by the songs-the lyrics lack particularity, and the music itself lacks depth. But this is also…is good music? As Music Radar reports, it has been “emitting a ruthless slope” for about two years Suno and Udio, if Velvet Sundown uses these tools to create music, it may be one of the first capabilities on the platform to successfully use these tools, and it may be one of the capabilities to “capture the public.”

On YouTube, there is an entire ecosystem of AI-generated music. One outstanding culture is AI, a channel that reimagines rap and R&B tracks as old-fashioned Motown or Blues Cuts, which includes fictional artists and AI-generated BIOS matches. A particularly noteworthy example is the AI-rendered cover of the future “Open the Lights” which was later sampled by rapper Jpegmafia on his latest album.

While the band has not confirmed that it was AI-generated, it also did not make any proof that it was wrong. Music Radar says it “with the unquestionable Lo-Fi veneer of Suno Creation”. A Reddit post says there is no “there is a lot of evidence of bands on the internet”.

But, in the end, there is no actual evidence that the band is produced by AI, and it is a struggle. When AI music becomes hard to capture, who’s the job to catch it? Trouble has led to some users posting disappointment in Spotify because they don’t notify listeners, or aren’t AI-generated bands. One person said on Reddit: “We should boycott Spotify now.” Another person replied that the band was also on Apple Music and Amazon Music.

Spotify did not immediately respond to Mashable’s request for comment.