Jojo Mayer_ME/MACHINE

ME/MACHINE is an adventure where human performance and the archaic power of drums interact with cutting edge generative music technology in real-time.

Jojo Mayer explores new possibilities, narratives and syntax of how humans could coexist with digital technology in a symbiotic way. An artistic approach to face an increasingly unpredictable and fast approaching future, where reliance on familiar protocol and planning could become more difficult – and improvisation more important instead.

As with his band NERVE, electronic music has been a central influence in Jojo Mayer’s work for the past decades. He spearheaded the movement of an entire generation of drummers to reverse engineer machine rhythms on acoustic drum set. ME/MACHINE constitutes the next chapter in this love affair.

“The initial impulse for ME/MACHINE came during an experimental recording session with Brian Eno shortly before the onset of the pandemic. I got struck by the ramifications generative, algorithmic technologies and AI will have on the future of music and thought: If only I had a year off, I would get down with this. And when all over sudden the world stood still and international touring came to a halt, it created an unexpected opportunity to fully immerse myself with these new tools to develop a music engine that follows, interprets and mutates input from my drumming. It’s my Corona baby.”

ME/MACHINE – an improvisational duet between a machine imitating human behavior and a human imitating idiosyncrasies of a machine.