On Wednesday, kiwi legends Elemeno P dropped a new song. ‘Shiver’ either marks a huge change in direction, unfettered use of AI, copyright infringement or an upload error. Gabi Lardies investigates.
“Woah, this build up is crazy.” I’m watching my colleague listen to a song I’ve been replaying all morning. She frowns and looks bewildered. I giggle. After about 30 seconds, she whips the headphones off. “I’ve heard enough.”
Mostly, she’s been hearing a male voice sing “my shiver comes to you” accompanied by dramatic electronic strings, keys and drums. According to their artist pages on Apple and YouTube, this is Elemeno P’s first new song in 13 years.
But to my ears, there’s not a wisp of the fun-loving power-pop anthems Elemeno P became known and loved for in the early 2000s (‘Fast times in Tahoe’, ‘Verona’, ‘11:57’). Instead it’s a strange electronic gloomy vaporwave crossed with Muse-like space rock. Whoever is singing doesn’t have Dave Gibson’s screamy, bouncy quality, but something talky and faux dramatic. The band’s signature group backing vocals are gone, and so too are instruments, apart from digital renditions. The track sounds like an ad for a fantasy video game.
‘Shiver’ is on YouTube, Apple Music and Spotify. On Spotify, it’s separated from the rest of the band’s discography by a pesky full stop. It’s under “Elemeno P.” rather than “Elemeno P”. Strangely, there’s nay a mention of the song on any of the band’s social media accounts. Under the YouTube video a fan has commented, “This doesn’t sound like gibbo at all.. someone buggared up and put this song against the wrong band?!”
The track is so tinny, electronic and flat, the lyrics so cliched (“ignoring rules and instructions”, “the writing is on the wall”, “ash into ash”) and barely sensical that one may wonder if it’s an AI creation. Identifying music made by AI is more complicated than counting demented fingers, or knowing that newborn babies simply can’t sit up or crouch to go fishing in puddles. I listened over and over again, hoping to catch a strange glitch, or unnatural voice modulation, but my ears are not musically trained. I turned to the experts. An online tool called Ircam Amplify claims to be able to detect music made by AI with 98.5% accuracy. When I ran ‘Shiver’ through it, it was 91% confident that AI did not write it. But does that mean that precious national treasures Elemeno P did?
On Spotify the credits state that it’s performed by Elemeno P, but written by Dmytro Honcharov and Oles Stepanov – up till now, neither of these names have been associated with the band. Yet they do appear to be real people. According to a portfolio website, Honcharov is a Ukranian photographer and cinematographer based in London. When I emailed him to ask about the song, he replied simply, “No I didn’t create any music tracks.”
Oles Stepanov is Ukranian too, or at least based in Kyiv, according to his Facebook page. He is a full service record producer and sound engineer, with fewer than 300 followers. His website gives a “402 Please renew your subscription” error message, but he regularly posts “how to make music” video tutorials and his own music on his Facebook. The most recent one teaches people how to make “cinematic orchestral track with Japanese ethnic instruments”.
He posts instrumental music under his own name, and has seven monthly listeners on Spotify. These tracks sound much more like ‘Shiver’ than anything Elemeno P has made, though none have vocals.
Back on the Elemeno P YouTube channel, there appears to be more clues. The caption states “Provided to YouTube by TuneCore”. TuneCore’s website sells itself to musicians as a platform from which to distribute music across Spotify, Apple Music, TikTok, YouTube and other platforms, while retaining ownership and copyright.
An internet search for “TuneCore sue” reveals a series of headlines from the past couple of days about Universal Music Group, ABKCO and Concord Music Group suing TuneCore and Believe (its parent company) for copyright infringement. The accusation is that TuneCore and Believe are “overrun with fraudulent ‘artists’ and pirate record labels” that are distributing copies of fraudulent recordings to streaming services and social media sites. In particular, they’ve distributed music by “Kendrik Laamar,” “Arriana Gramde,” “Jutin Biber” and “Llady Gaga.” Universal say that tracks are sped up or remixed versions of popular songs, and that the “rampant piracy” exists to collect royalties. Not only does Believe allow these nefarious activities, but their business is “built on industrial-scale copyright infringement,” said a spokesperson for Universal in a statement. They’re suing for $500 million.
Perhaps the decades-old Elemeno P fanbase (2.33 thousand YouTube subscribers and over 52,000 monthly listeners on Spotify) is being leveraged for royalties. At the moment, ‘Shiver’ is tracking at 47 views, about half of them attributable to me.
I go straight to the top, because Elemeno P are rockstars who don’t reply to Facebook messages (fair). Universal Music New Zealand is quick to reply. “This is not an Elemeno P song. It is an incorrect upload that has been put to their profile, and will be removed from all platforms shortly.” When I press further, asking if the upload was an attempt at copyright infringement or someone trying to leverage the Elemeno P fanbase to make more royalties, they replied, “Occasionally this happens when artists have similar names, and in the backend their music can be mistakenly assigned to the wrong profile.” But who has a name similar to Elemeno P? Oles Stepanov has some of the same letters, I suppose.
“I will get back to you as soon as possible,” was his Facebook auto-reply.