For visitors to blogs like this one, Albums That Never Were, Albums That Should Exist, or Albums Reconstructed etc, the holy grail of unreleased albums has to be The Beach Boys' 'SMiLE'. Originally planned as a follow-up to 'Pet Sounds', the 1967 recording sessions collapsed under the weight of Brian Wilson's perfectionism, mental instability and drug use. The Beach Boys shelved the project and released the simplified 'Smiley Smile' in 1967, and since then there have been many, many fan reconstructions of the record posted on blogs the world over. In fact, the very first CD that I ever bought was a 'SMiLE' bootleg - yes, I bought a bootleg CD before I'd even tested out my new CD player on an actual album. Since then audio editing has become much more accessible for the amateur enthusiast, and so, for instance, soniclovenoise over at Albums That Never Were has posted four versions of the album, and there are many, many reconstructions of varying quality available on Youtube. Not only that, but the sessions have been officially released, and Brian Wilson has even played it live, so what more can possibly be said about it. Well, how about a remix where AI has been trained to sing like Brian, using a recent singing voice conversion model, and then to add his 1967 vocals to the tracks where Brian himself never sang. It took over 100 hours of work, and he was prepared for a backlash from fervent purists who would class this as sacrilege, but Dae Lims has now posted his completely remixed version of 'SMiLE' on Youtube, and as the download link keeps being deleted then I'm posting it here so that BB fans can at least hear it once to make up their own mind. I'm not yet convinced about whether AI is a saviour or a menace to the arts, but when you hear what it can do in the right hands then I start to think that it could be a part of the future of music if used ethically. Give this a listen and decide for yourself if it's the best ever version of 'SMiLE', or if it's a complete and utter abomination.
Track listing
01 Our Prayer
02 You're Welcome
03 Heroes And Villains
04 I'm In Great Shape
05 Barnyard
06 Do You Like Worms
07 Cabinessence
08 The Old Master Painter/You Are My Sunshine
09 Wonderful
10 Fire/I Wanna Be Around
11 Vega-Tables
12 Wind Chimes
13 Child Is Father Of The Man
14 I Love To Say Dada/In Blue Hawaii
15 Surf's Up
All songs remixed using AI de-mixing technology.
Tracks 3,4,5,6,8,9,10,12,13,14,15 contain new AI vocals.
Tracks 3,4,7,9,10,12 contain AI enhanced vocals.
'Do You Like Worms' contains new melodies, partially based on 'Little Pad' by The Beach Boys.
'Child Is Father Of The Man' contains new lyrics and melodies, inspired by the original and 2004 versions of the song.
Wow! Thank you!
ReplyDeleteI had seen this originally coming off a comment on SLN's new update, but the link led to what I assume was a truncated version as it only had 8 tracks. Curious to see how this is, as my only point of reference is the Magna Qualitas Records[https://magnaqualitasrecords.jimdofree.com/]' most recent update of *their* SMiLE reconstruction to go by, and I went into it not being much of a BB fan at all.
ReplyDeleteThank, can't wait to download.
ReplyDeleteThanks! I am very curious to give this a good listening. For your information, I just found a FLAC version (and a custom cover) on archive.org, but it is unclear if these files are from a lossless source. See https://archive.org/details/DaeLimsSMiLEAI
ReplyDeleteReally interested to listen to this. Thanks!
ReplyDeleteThis sounds great! I lot more presence than I've heard on ALLL the various versions I've accumulated over the years. Couple personal quibbles - I would invert DA DA and Child and probably omit Welcome all together leaving Good Vibrations/You're Welcome as a fully stand alone single. Even so this will be the one I put on my player.
ReplyDelete