Ben Neill’s new album Amalgam Sphere represents a fusion of musical creativity, technology, and collaboration. Each track is its own “sphere,” shaped by the interplay of human artistry, artificial intelligence, and cutting-edge software tools, with Neill’s remarkable Mutantrumpet at its core. These elements combine to create immersive musical landscapes that blend the Mutantrumpet’s rich ambient textures with otherworldly vocal samples and AI generated beats, all controlled live by Neill’s invented instrument. New tracks will be released every few weeks over the coming months.
Collaboration is central to Amalgam Sphere, both conceptually and sonically. Neill collaborates with British psychedelic philosopher and evolutionary biologist Rupert Sheldrake on the first release, ”Morphic Resonance,” and also with Ethiopian producer Mikael Seifu on the forthcoming “Nefasphere.” The album resonates with themes from Neill’s recently published book Diffusing Music, addressing the challenges artists face in navigating today’s overwhelming abundance of musical content. Several pieces are built from fragments of text referenced in the book by Terence McKenna, John Cage, Marcel Duchamp, and others. Their words are transformed into music through a custom software application that maps letters to musical notes, generating shifting harmonic structures from the Mutantrumpet’s live sampled sounds. Other AI-based programs shape intricate grooves, further blurring the boundaries between human and machine creativity.
In his live performances, Neill triggers and manipulates interactive video of spheres, created in collaboration with artists such as chaos mathematician Ralph Abraham, digital artist Carl van Brunt, and Parisian filmmakers Chrystel Egal and Anne Guillaume (Studio Stakkato).
Amalgam Sphere demonstrates how artistic connection—across people, ideas, and technology—can transform this abundance into unified and evocative expression. With its blend of atmospheric depth, rhythmic momentum, and collaborative energy, the Amalgam Sphere invites listeners into a space where creation itself becomes a dynamic and boundary-breaking process.
