Music startup Thoughtful Things has just launched the Kickstarter campaign for its first instrument, Engram. It's a sampler and groovebox that uses AI to mangle incoming audio and even hallucinate completely new sounds. This isn't Suno in a box, though. This isn't a "push-button, get-song" device, aimed at creating something that sounds ready for top-40 radio. It's about creating experimental, uncanny sounds and pushing AI audio models beyond their limits.

Engram isn't connected to the internet. Instead, it runs a "tiny AI" locally. According to the Kickstarter listing, the model is designed in-house and custom-trained. The company says:

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I don't think I'm going to hurt anyone's feelings by pointing out that Decap doesn't have the name recognition of Kendrick Lamar, Olivia Rodrigo, or Charli XCX. But his fingerprints are all over tracks from them, as well as many other artists, including Freddie Gibbs, Bad Bunny, Mac Miller, BTS, and even Ludwig Göransson's score for Oppenheimer.

Nicholas Piantedosi, better known as Decap, is a record producer, but perhaps more importantly, he's the man behind Drums That Knock, a series of sample packs that have found their way onto countless records across genres. The line is so successful that, after debuting in 2016, it's now on its 11th …

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