Paul Ford Made an Interstellar Jukebox
Meet Stellate.app. It’s my answer to the question everyone always asks: “What would it sound like to be a ghost walking around the empty mall in an abandoned alien space station while vaporwave-style, sometimes slightly atonal music, in a vast number of imaginary genres, blurs together in the background, layered in with random voices and sound effects?”
I’m listening to a track that Stellate synthesized right now and I actually like it. It has a gorgeous, sad chord progression punctuated by a 1950s British radio announcer’s voice and, every once in a while, a monkey doing a Wilhelm Scream. There are so many interesting things going on with the mix. The arrangement changes over time in a really pleasing way.
“It can shock you with how pretty the melodies and harmonies can be,” Paul says, “but after a while, it leaves you feeling hollowed out inside, because it’s a machine with no understanding. I think that’s kind of reassuring.”
Star-hop in Stellate and read Paul’s explanation. All the audio is synthesized by your browser; no generative AI.