Alia Makau is an exploration of what happens when a longtime songwriter invites artificial intelligence into the band. Every song was written and arranged by John Andrew, with AI-generated musicians and voices joining human performances throughout the album. Some songs are new; others are older compositions reimagined in strikingly different forms. The result moves from indie rock and jazz to blues and Hawaiiana, while remaining rooted in melody, lyrics, and the human act of making musical choices.

Makau is Hawaiian for “hook.” On the cover, two hooks form a boat carrying humanity and Alia—AI’s nom de plume—together: all of us, quite literally, in the same boat.

The triangle-headed figure on the cover represents AI. That pointy head reminds this author of Oblio, from Harry Nilsson’s classic concept album The Point!, where everyone’s head came to a point except Oblio’s. He was an outcast because his head was round. I don’t mean to equate AI with some inverse Oblio, shunned for its different appearance and capabilities. But I do mean to raise the question: In this age of Auto-Tune, synthesizers, drum machines—and now generative AI—what does it mean to author a song? Where do we draw the line? And, importantly, why do we draw lines?

For myself, I see authorship as a spectrum. Pick your favorite color. Yes, that includes the autoharp. What matters most is being connected to oneself, each other, and the environment that sustains us. Music is what we hear when the threads of those connections are plucked.

This album is an experiment in what can happen when human intention, voice, and vision are amplified by this latest pointy-headed tool. And to restate: every song on this album was written by a human. The AI was directed to generate performances on selected tracks, including female vocals. But even then, it took well over a year to bring the album together through human performance (for example, that’s a real piano on Last Time), editing, arranging, mixing, remixing, re-remixing, and finally mastering—creative human decisions and judgments all along the way.

I hope you’ll distinguish this work from the low-effort result of a few AI prompts and instead hear it as a high-effort exploration of partnership. There’s much to talk about. But please let the work itself have a voice in that discussion.

Here’s a download link for all 14 songs: AliaMakauMP3

Thank you for your comments. Oh, and I interviewed AI itself about the typical concerns. Here is that link.

https://directory.libsyn.com/episode/index/id/37573955

Stay in tune,

John Andrew

John@JohnAndrew.net