Cinematic Code: Building Soundscapes with Tools of the System

Sometimes, the best way to critique a system is to play it like an instrument.

As we shaped this album, sonically and conceptually, I found myself pulling increasingly from the world of electronic music. Modular synths, granular processing, algorithmic textures: these weren’t just effects. They became characters. They added tension and unpredictability to a record that, at its core, is about the cost of predictability.

I built a lot of the sound design inside Ableton, not just with it. I mean that literally, the DAW itself became a living, responsive environment. I would loop modular patterns, bend noise into melody, and let granular synthesis smear moments across time. The goal wasn’t to make things “sound electronic.” It was to blur the line between chaos and control. Between organic and synthetic. Between what was played and what was processed.

But the strangest, and most illuminating, tool I used was AI itself.

While scripting the narrative arc of the album, framing the protagonist’s descent into surveillance and capture, I began by combing through public domain voice samples. The idea was to stitch together a story from found existing sounds, but it felt disjointed, like trying to film a movie with footage from a dozen different sets.

Then I discovered Eleven Labs, a text-to-speech platform with disturbingly natural AI voices. Suddenly, I could write the story, and have it spoken back to me. At first, I wrestled with the ethics, was I using the same technology I was critiquing? But then I realized, that tension was the point.

I was using the machine to tell the story of its own influence. Writing a record about AI control with AI voices only to then mangle, distort, and re-contextualize those voices musically which became an act of subversion. The synthetic became symbolic.

What emerged was a soundtrack to our current condition: half-coded, half-human, filled with beauty and dread.

This isn’t a rejection of technology. It’s a reframing. The tools aren’t the enemy it’s how they’re used, and who they serve. And if we can repurpose them to tell truths rather than sell products, maybe there’s still hope in the circuitry.