Ancient Lasers

Ancient Lasers is the musi­cal work of Daniel Fin­fer, a Los Angeles-based multi-instrumentalist and vocalist.

Daniel Fin­fer of Ancient Lasers

Artists love to say their music has a mes­sage, but what hap­pens when that mes­sage is “the Sin­gu­lar­ity is Near”? Musi­cian Daniel Fin­fer cre­ates albums that explore the con­cepts and con­se­quences of accel­er­at­ing tech­nol­ogy while still pos­sess­ing enough pop-music chops to make them acces­si­ble. Ancient Lasers has tracks with titles like You in the Future and Replac­ing You. On first lis­ten they may sound like Finfer’s singing to a girl, but lines like “I don’t need you in the future” are about post-singularity robots dis­miss­ing the need for humans. Pretty trippy stuff, and awe­some to lis­ten to. I had a chance to talk with Fin­fer and get the inside line on his new album, the inspi­ra­tion behind his work, and his future projects with groups like Idiot Pilot. It’s ‘pay as you like’ and Fin­fer is look­ing for 50% of the pro­ceeds to be donated to Singularity-minded orga­ni­za­tions like the Sin­gu­lar­ity Sym­po­sium and oth­ers.

Daniel Finfer’s inspi­ra­tion for blend­ing accel­er­at­ing tech­nolo­gies with music may sound famil­iar to many of you. Five years ago, he was struck by how few pop songs really had a mean­ing­ful mes­sage, and at the same time he was read­ing Ray Kurzweil’s The Sin­gu­lar­ity is Near. Fin­fer got the idea for cre­at­ing songs that explored the themes of the Sin­gu­lar­ity under the guise of pop music. While his lyrics may sound like they are a stereo­typ­i­cal explo­ration of love, romance, and youth­ful bravado, they are actu­ally “a con­ver­sa­tion between my future and present selves, I’m sort of talk­ing back and forth through time.”

Speak­ing with Fin­fer, it’s clear that mak­ing Sin­gu­lar­ity themed music isn’t just about cre­at­ing a cool con­cept album, it’s part of a larger move­ment. Friends from his home­town of Belm­ing­ham, Wash­ing­ton, Michael Har­ris and Daniel Ander­son, found suc­cess and a record con­tract per­form­ing as Idiot Pilot. Fin­fer prob­a­bly could have gone the same route, but the release of his music online shows a dif­fer­ent phi­los­o­phy. “In the past ten years, I mean what’s the rea­son for pay­ing for music?” Get­ting free albums on the inter­net is so easy that Fin­fer is using his Singularity-themed albums to explore new mod­els of rev­enue. His work is largely ‘pay as you like’ and Ancient Lasers gen­er­ated 30,000+ down­loads. Not bad for an indie inter­net artist, and he’s just get­ting started. Ancient Lasers rep­re­sents what Fin­fer believes the whole music indus­try may need to tran­si­tion towards. “No one pays for music any­more,” so you have to give your audi­ence another rea­son to fund your work. Instead of piracy you have a sort of online patron­age sys­tem where lis­ten­ers pay for down­loads because they like the music and because they believe in the cause.

Daniel Fin­fer With Keyboard

It’s insight­ful ideas like that which makes Finfer’s approach to music so inter­est­ing to fol­low, whether or not his songs are actu­ally to your taste. Another part of Finfer’s bur­geon­ing career that excites me is the cre­ative story-based approach he takes with his projects. I find lit­tle nar­ra­tive con­ceits like this really cool. It makes me won­der if more of the music in the years ahead will focus on telling sto­ries across dif­fer­ent media. (Is Lady Gaga doing this already?)

In the future, the idea of what makes an artist suc­cess­ful will have to change. First off, there will be mil­lions (bil­lions?) of peo­ple look­ing to share their music and ideas with the world via YouTube and the inter­net at large. We’ll all be tak­ing in con­tent (con­sum­ing) and many of us will be pro­duc­ing it as well. The bound­ary between those two sides will shrink until all of us qual­ify as a sort of ‘pro­sumer’ hybrid. In this new envi­ron­ment, and with the wide­spread piracy of intel­lec­tual prop­erty, it might be hard for artists to live off their art alone. The ’50% of sales as dona­tion’ con­cept that Fin­fer describes may be one pos­si­ble solution.

Ancient Lasers Studio

For many pro­sumers, how­ever, it may be more about get­ting your mes­sage heard than mak­ing money.  Finfer’s music may be about the future, but his life is also a lit­tle taste of what the future may hold for many young peo­ple look­ing to become the next gen­er­a­tion of artists. The days of mas­sive music cor­po­ra­tions hand­ing our million-dollar record deals are prob­a­bly num­bered. Cre­ative story telling and music, how­ever, are going to live on…right through to the Singularity.

Cur­rently prepar­ing for shows in the Los Ange­les area to pro­mote the recently released EP (pro­duced by Daniel Ander­son of Glow­bug, Idiot Pilot, Hyro Da Hero), Ancient Lasers fea­tures a new live band.  Emraan Jawaid com­mands a fear­some net­work of bit­crush­ers, dis­tor­tion and reverb ped­als on gui­tar; Cris Scullin, a fel­low multi-instrumentalist who also pro­duces tracks is fea­tured on bass; and Drew Hol­l­i­day holds down drums and per­cus­sion — all while Daniel Fin­fer sings and cues loops & effects on a Kaoss Pad 3, Launch­pad, Akai MPK25, and an array of synthesizers.