musician | retromatti made and designed in canada

Garry Kasparov and Deep Blue album cover

Matti Charlton – Garry Kasparov and Deep Blue

https://distrokid.com/hyperfollow/matticharlton/garry-kasparov-and-deep-blue

On Spotify April 14th, also a video on YouTube:

Matti Charlton’s upcoming new sythpop/synthwave single Garry Kasparov and Deep Blue, with it’s 2001: A Space Odyssey cover art and fonts, and seemingly cryptic lyrics, is a fascinating listen and showcases the transgender Canadian artist’s incredible talent and complexity as they weave two tales together into a narrative about artificial intelligence that is especially relevant today and in the future.

Matti takes the science fact of the Deep Blue chess program win, and the science fiction of Stanley Kubrick 1969 epic film “2001: A Space Odyssey” and brings them together to remind us of the future we face with artificial intelligence. All of this is delivered with VERY catchy lyrics and hooks, a great retro 80s sound delivered with modern production values. We are excited about this song!

On May 11, 1997 the chess computer program Deep Blue running on an IBM Server defeated Garry Kasparov 3.5 – 2.5 games. It was the first time a chess program had defeated a grand master human and is considered to be a major achievement in the history of artificial intelligence.

28 years earlier, in 1969, Stanley Kubrick directed the visually stunning 2001: A Space Odyssey in which a futuristic alien intelligence becomes revealed to mankind throughout history culminating a mission to Jupiter where a computer program running on the space craft sent to the alien signal’s source there exhibits disturbing motives.

The program, HAL, is a reference also to IBM (H-A-L are the precursor letters in the alphabet to the letters I-B-M).

Our fear of artificial intelligence wanting to kill us as we as humans explore the universe is a pervasive one; but “there’s nothing more that we can do”. The win that Deep Blue secured over Garry Kasparov is considered a landmark in AI. As we move to the future, we always want more knowledge and so it is inevitable that artificial intelligence will evolve and surpass us as the most sophisticated and advance sentience and intelligent life on Earth. There’s nothing more that we can do, this is a certainty.

This song weaves those stories and that narrative together in a loquacious rhythm overtop of retrofuturism’s most promising and strong musical styles – synthwave.

Featuring references to both the chess game between Kasparov and Deep Blue – literally, the moves from the game – in the lyrics: “Black Pawn to Queen 4” and “White Bishop slides to Queen’s Knight 2”

and also featuring clear references to the 1969 Kubrick science fiction film (as well as the album artwork, which has artist Matti Charlton stylized in what is clearly a similar spacesuit treatment to what Dave wears when confronting HAL in the computer server area of the spaceship “Discovery”) there are references to the “star child” the main actor becomes as well as the famous phrase uttered by him in the film “Open the pod bay doors, HAL”.

This song is a gem of interwoven complexity about the inevitable rise of artificial intelligence and that, whether our fears are justified or not, we cannot stop the event from occurring as well as pressed onwards and upwards in our achievements and abilities that A.I.’s rise and our inevitable replacement is a certainty at some point in the future.

The Deep Blue chess program win is used as a watershed moment in that realization and those who were alive to remember the game happening on May 11, 1997 can attest to the weight of that moment in history.

For those too young to have experienced it, the song is a wake up call to remind all of us of the certainty of this outcome.

Better to accept what you cannot change than to war against inevitability! Perhaps the future foundation of A.I.’s rise to power will not be as fraught with danger and HAL’s murderous intentions as we fear? Only time will tell!

Song lyrics:

There’s nothing more that you can do
White bishop slides to queen’s knight 2
This black obelisk annihilating you
A queen’s ransom in a castle fool
In a castle fool, and

Just give it some thought, why don’t you?
Garry Kasparov and Deep Blue
Electrons firing like machine guns do
Garry Kasparov and Deep Blue

As time peels away, the gambit placed
Can our hubris burn away?
Now you can see that
You have always wanted more
But the time has come to forfeit
Black pawn to queen 4
No more, and

You are the star child
Open the pod bay doors, HAL
You are the star child
Open the pod bay doors, HAL
You are the star child
Open the pod bay doors, HAL

Just give it some thought, why don’t you?
Garry Kasparov and Deep Blue
Electrons firing like machine guns do
Garry Kasparov and Deep Blue

You are the star child
There’s nothing more that you can do
Garry Kasparov and Deep Blue
A queen’s ransom in a castle fool

Give it some thought why don’t you?
There’s nothing more that you can do
Open the pod bay doors, HAL
There’s nothing more that you can do

Garry Kasparov and Deep Blue

As a 21st century music producer and recording artist, I have used all three services extensively, so here’s the scoop on all of them.

tl,dr: SubmitHub is the only one worth the money, but it rarely is and you better have serious GAME. Get ready to be humiliated.

This rant was originally shared in the artist chat room on submithub.com

SubmitHub basics

I have a rant about SubmitHub.com in case y’all missed it.

And the music industry in general.

One of my regulars among the curators who – more often than not – accept my submissions, just re-accepted a previously accepted song that I had sent them again because the song had expired the original 30 days time expired on their playlist.

That they re-accepted the track was not surprising, it was the amount of time it was accepted for this second time around – six months!

Here’s the kicker: being on this curator’s playlist got my song almost 4,000 streams that month.

So you just have to find curators here with high playlist listener engagement, and send them music suited so much to their audience’s tastes that it’s presence on their playlist is an asset to their listenership.

Developing regular symbiotic relationships with curators like the one I just described is a key element in finding success here on SubmitHub, and really I won’t lie, it’s not easy.

You have to dumpster dive the low quality curators – by either digging through their shit or by monitoring their playlist transformation and listenership engagement/audience size fluctuations over time, or you can be stupid like how I did it and waste a shit tonne of premium credits on attempting to connect with curators who were either not appropriate for my music (or vice-versa), and/or I wasn’t willing to admit that my music wasn’t completely ready yet.

You need flawless execution if what you’re composing, producing, mix/mastering and packaging and shipping is anything but revolutionary in its offering.

And let me tell you, even if it IS revolutionary you still need near flawless execution.

And let me dismiss something from your thoughts right now: I don’t care how talented you are or think you are, what you’re writing?

It’s not revolutionary.

But that doesn’t mean you can’t have success! It just has to be impeccable.

Mozart your production, bitches.

Then track down mature curators who cut their playlists and audience from the same cloth, and offer them a yard of your material.

Eventually they will be ordering by the bolt, so to speak.

Playlist Push

Oh and P.S. do not bother with playlist push who charges you more to keep the wizard of oz behind the curtain.

Many of those curators there are in here too, and PP offers them MORE money to accept than decline.

So guess what?

Not only is that basically payola, but it taints them relationship building process that needs a more even benefit based on the actual VALUE of the “goods” exchanged – that is, playlist placement benefits their audience and benefits your artist development and income.

That’s what you want, not bribing curators like a mafia.

Musosoup

And if you’re going to try to bring up musosoup, don’t bother.

It’s MOSTLY a cesspool of nouveau “music blogs” and “influencers” with audience sizes – and playlist likes – in single or double digits at most, who are gold rushing to get onboard curatorship with these aggrendizers.

They don’t give a shit about your music, they churn out “PR opportunities” without anything REMOTELY resembling fiscally soluble investment, so FORGET about ROI. The “free alternatives” they offer you almost always come with strings attached expecting you to leverage YOUR AUDIENCE to benefit THEM far more than you.

The free options are always castrated of anything remotely resembling value, ie “you’ll be put on a playlist no guarantee of where” (ie the end, and we all know that’s worth fuck all).

Then the paid options are overpriced and they evade any questions you ask them to help you compute the quantitative value of the offer to see if it’s worth it to spend the like 30 quid on a blog post.

Ask them to send you a snapshot of their weekly traffics and see what they say.

It’s an easy-as-cake and quick thing for them to do in the musosoup interface, but watch how they dodge the easy direct response.

You get diatribe about qualitative nonsense instead, sorry I’m not paying you to improve your copywriting skills at the expense of my music’s false appreciation just for a calculus of value in SEO and back links to your wet-behind-the ears shitty blog that you started two months ago just so you could build towards your dream of earning your living exploiting the saturated music production market with your internet noise pollution contribution to culture, technology and humanity.

I have larger concerns trying to say something meaningful.

Conclusion: Submithub

SubmitHub is the only place where a message like mine – and potentially yours – has any hope of being heard by the right tastemakers ears to bring that song to the audience meant to hear it.

You gotta work your ass off, though.

And for fucks sake grow a pair most of y’all (not the regulars in here obvi) and learn some humility first.

Your music will be shit garbage before it’s hot shit – and garbage for a LONG time before it’s even remotely good.

Persist, but remember that.

I don’t care if you think otherwise, you’re wrong, that’s the truth, and I STILL make mostly shit garbage music.

I work hard and tirelessly, and if you do too the way I detailed and one day you can hope to maybe be on the world charts on here for all-time for one of the major genre families, or more than one like I am – and you too will be able to bask in the riches you’ll have earned with blood, sweat and tears and moola, like the $40 or so I make monthly from Spotify (when they pay me, they don’t always);

I mean that’s enough to pay almost half a cell phone bill; or a couple of movie theatre tickets (I mean, like when they re-open them and stuff.)

Sounds crazy but ya gotta dream big!

Why listen to me?

I’m a charting artist on SubmitHub.

For all-time, all genres in my country of Canada, I’m #34 with my song Dark Addiction.

Then for all countries, all-time I also rank in 3 major genres and 1 subgenre.

For the Classic genre, I rate at number #9 with Dark Addiction.

For IDM / Downtempo, I rate at #43 with The Ringing of the Bells (Echo Twelve Remix).

And then in the sub-genre of Synthwave (Under the major genre group of Blogwave), I rank at #10 with Neon Delorean.

In the sub-genre of Noise / Harsh Noise Wall, I have two songs ranking for all time: #10 We Are Not Gods Again and #14 The Dark Vastness of Space.

Check out the Popular charts link at the top of the menu on Submithub.com and you’ll see me there if you choose the parameters mentioned above!

This has made me enough money from the streams across almost a year to maybe afford one nice meal at a medium price restaurant. That’s about it. Like less than $100. Spotify does not pay well. Apple Music pays much better.

Tag: musician

Matti Charlton’s new song “Garry Kasparov and Deep Blue” touches on our fear of A.I. with nuances of 60’s and 90’s nostalgia

A review and discussion of SubmitHub, PlaylistPush and Musosoup: Music Promotional insights