LP + inlay
34:05 min
Strictly limited to 100 copies
core 026

• Gilles Aubry – synthesizers and composition
• Participating musicians – Ali Faiq (vocals) and Idr Bazrou (lotar and rebab)
• Mastered by Kassian Troyer at Dubplates & Mastering
• Cover design by Sofia Fahli at Edition Atonale
• www.corvorecords.de
• www.earpolitics.net
• core 026
• LC 98739

“… A quiet jewel for listeners willing to engage deeply… This work is not just music but a thoughtful, poetic artifact of cultural and technological convergence. Aubry’s extensive history of bridging avant-garde and traditional music, and his collaborations with artists from North Africa to Berlin, clearly inform this release’s nuanced perspective.”
— Chain D.L.K. (USA)

“… a collage of sonic assault spread over two LP sides”
— Audion (UK)

In an age where the hum of machines is often just background noise, Gilles Aubry’s “L’Makina” invites us to lean closer, to really listen – and to think. This is not a mere homage to mechanized sounds or a cold exercise in electronic music. Rather, it’s a profound meditation on the uneasy, ambivalent dance between humans and their machines, through the lens of a nearly century-old Moroccan song that anticipated these very questions long before AI and algorithms colonized our imaginations.
“L’Makina” is anchored in history yet propelled by the future. The title track nods to L’Haj Belaid’s 1930s “L’Makina” – a song that wryly wrestles with the phonograph as both marvel and menace, a machine that could “steal” the voice and livelihood of a traditional musician. Aubry picks up this thread, weaving it into a modern fabric spun from his recordings with Moroccan musicians Ali Faiq (vocals) and Idr Bazrou (lotar, rebab), and processed through a machine learning model (RAVE) designed for timbral analysis.
The result is a layered conversation: part homage, part experiment, part philosophical inquiry. The synthetic textures and the organic timbres merge and diverge like dancers unsure whether to embrace or resist each other. Aubry’s deft manipulation of electronic processes doesn’t erase the human presence but interrogates the very nature of co-creation when the “other” is a non-human intelligence. The music sometimes feels like a ghostly echo of L’Haj Belaid’s rebellion and resignation, filtered through the prism of contemporary computational anxieties.

Yet, despite the cerebral undertones, “L’Makina” is far from clinical. There is warmth in the way the lotar and rebab float amid the glitchy shimmer, and a touch of humor in the machine’s occasional stumbles – a reminder that artificial intelligence is still learning to grasp what humans have practiced for centuries: social nuance, storytelling, and the sacred duty of musical transmission.
Aubry’s sound world here is simultaneously intimate and vast, with moments of quiet reflection that bloom into dense, almost ritualistic soundscapes. The album’s two long parts – 17 and 16 minutes respectively – demand patience but reward it with immersive detail, like peeling back the layers of a delicate, sonic origami folded between tradition and innovation.
This work is not just music but a thoughtful, poetic artifact of cultural and technological convergence. Aubry’s extensive history of bridging avant-garde and traditional music, and his collaborations with artists from North Africa to Berlin, clearly inform this release’s nuanced perspective. His approach isn’t about nostalgia or rejection of progress but about reckoning with the paradoxes and promises embedded in our ever-deepening relationship with machines.

The limited vinyl edition (100 copies) and the sober, elegant cover by Sofia Fahli encapsulate the tactile and contemplative nature of the project – a quiet jewel for listeners willing to engage deeply.

In sum, “L’Makina” is a sonic meditation on memory, modernity, and machine intelligence that asks: Can a machine really know a song? And if it can’t, what does that mean for the future of music, culture, and human expression? Gilles Aubry doesn’t hand you easy answers but invites you to join the dialogue – headphones on, ears wide open, heart ready to be both challenged and charmed.
— Vito Camarretta, Chain D.L.K.

When I listen to music, I see shapes, objects and colours. What happens in your body when you’re listening? Do you listen with your eyes open or closed?

I often see shapes and colors. If you listen to my new album L’Makina, you might experience green, ochre and rust-like retinal impressions. The piece is a haunting soundscape that combines AI-generated sound textures with modular synths.

Structured in two parts, L’Makina explores the spectral possibilities of a virtual sound model developed using a machine learning algorithm, in collaboration with Moroccan musicians Ali Faiq and Idr Basrou.

Early rwais music is know for its trance-inducing qualities, of which the album is a tentative translation into abstract electronic music.

How do listening with headphones and listening through a stereo system change your experience of sound and music?

My albums are primarily intended for headphone listening, because for me an album should above all be a daily companion, a soothing, stimulating and protective presence that I take with me wherever I go, a quasi-talisman in the best of cases.

Tell me about some of the albums or artists that you love specifically for their sound, please.

The album ‘Ahir Bhairav’ by Indian guitarist Brij Bushan Kabra is an example of talismanic sound. For me, his playing touches on the essence of tranquility.

Gilles Aubry about the Magic of Sound(s)
Aubry’s list of favourite sounds is long, extending from abandoned railway shacks and a river gorge in the Moroccan Atlas to old movie theatres and the hellbound chaos of metal band Portal. But don’t get him started on the sirens of Berlin’s fire trucks!

If you enjoyed this Gilles Aubry interview and would like to keep up to date with his music, visit his official homepage. He is also on Instagram, Mastodon, and bandcamp.

Do you experience strong emotional responses towards certain sounds? If so, what kind of sounds are these and do you have an explanation about the reasons for these responses?

Unsurprisingly, the human voice is the sound that moves me most.

On my previous album Rbia Harsha Cinta (2024, Antibody Records), Imane Zoubai’s voice perfectly complements the dark, industrial textures generated with my modular synth. Taken from my film Atlantic Ragagar (2022), her voice pronounces the names of seaweeds in Moroccan Arabic whose existence is threatened by anthropic pressure, described on BBC3 as “dark hymn for endangered seaweed species”.

There can be sounds which feel highly irritating to us and then there are others we could gladly listen to for hours. Do you have examples for either one or both of these?

The most annoying sound to me is the ridiculously loud fire trucks in Berlin. You can hear them on my 2008 album Berlin Backyards (Cronica Electronica), though attenuated by the resonance of courtyards.

Are there everyday places, spaces, or devices which intrigue you by the way they sound? Which are these?

I’ve always been fascinated by the sound of abandoned places, such as the railway shack in East Berlin where I’ve made all the recordings for my album s6t8r (winds measures records).

What are among your favourite spaces to record and play your music?

The Taghia river gorge in the Moroccan Atlas has amazing resonances, which can be heard on my audio essay  “Taghia, Matriphonie de la Source.” I also spent a lot of time recording in the Salam Cinema in Agadir, a movie theater that had been abandoned for several years and in which I shot my film Salam Godzilla (2019).

Do music and sound feel “material” to you? Does working with sound feel like you’re sculpting or shaping something?

Sound is material, semiotic, sacred, all at once, and more!

I learned a lot from sounds and asked them many questions. When I catch a noise there’s a sensation. First you love something, then you hear it. Each sound is its own shape, texture and colour. Ears go through different seasons, turn into strings, wings, and hammer. The body gets more air as it dances on more risks.

Seth S. Horowitz called hearing the “universal sense” and emphasised that it was more precise and faster than any of our other senses, including vision. How would our world be different if we paid less attention to looks and listened more instead?

Certainly, I haven’t heard of any born blind dictators.

Though most interesting is perhaps the combination of senses, for example the idea of audiovision. It’s also the name of the Teichmann brothers’ magnificent concert series in Berlin, which will host my album launch concert on May 15 2025 at the Zwingli Kirche.
— 15 Questions interview

Twórczość muzyczna Gillesa Aubry’ego koncentruje się na przecięciu muzyki tradycyjnej i sztucznej inteligencji.

Tytuł płyty nawiązuje do L’Makina (The machine), piosenki o fonografie skomponowanej w latach 30. przez jednego z najbardziej znanych muzyków rwais L’Haj Belaid (1873-1945). Tekst jego piosenki zawiera wyraźne odniesienia do symboli nowoczesności: samochodu, budynków i herbaty (która została wprowadzona do Maroka w XIX wieku), a także innych form zmotoryzowanych podróży.

Jego opis fonografu jako wiernej maszyny do nagrywania mowy nie jest pozbawiony ironii; zdaje sobie sprawę, że może on odebrać mu jego własną pracę. L’Makina stanowi wczesny przykład intelektualnego zaangażowania w relacje człowiek-maszyna w Maroku, co ciekawie rezonuje z obecnymi niepokojami wywołanymi wszechobecną informatyką, sztuczną inteligencją i uczeniem maszynowym.

Kompozycja zawiera dźwięki stworzone za pomocą algorytmu uczenia maszynowego do analizy barwy (RAVE), wykorzystującego nagrania instrumentów rwais jako dane wejściowe. Muzyka prowokuje pytania o sztuczną inteligencję jako nie-ludzki byt we współtworzonych procesach. Podkreśla również ograniczenia technologii, która nie jest jeszcze w stanie w pełni zrozumieć podstawowych aspektów ludzkiej ekspresji, takich jak społeczna funkcja muzyki i etyczne przekazywanie informacji.
— Anxious, Musick Magazine