Jessica Roch on ‘Human Music’ and Making Music as a Human (Interview)

I’d wager that most of us can’t go a day without hearing the terms “artificial intelligence” or “AI.” Oftentimes, it’ll be paired with other phrases like “inevitable” and “this is just the beginning.” The rise of AI in recent years has been exhausting, and yet we’re told it’s just getting started. Particularly in creative spaces, AI has started an ongoing debate about what’s real and what happens when you remove artists from the art equation.

London-based composer Jessica Roch is feeling all this, too. She’s an award-winning artist and co-runner of The London Ambient Orchestra, crafting stunning orchestral ambient music. Her latest album, Human Music: Live Improvisations I, is a beautiful response to this ongoing debate around AI in music. She makes her case in the simplest way: by creating music herself. As she tells me over an email interview, there’s something particularly human not just about playing music, but improvising.

The six tracks on this album were all recorded in different locations—from London churches to arts spaces—in front of live audiences. While the recordings weren’t originally made with the idea of becoming a record, Roch listened back to them and started to see this common thread. It’s not just in the way that she’s making the music, but also in the fact that it was done in front of others; a testament to humanity, connection, and the way music moves us.

“I wouldn’t describe myself as a spiritual person at all—but there is definitely something magical about how music makes us feel,” Roch tells me. “I know science can explain why it does these things to our brains, but it doesn’t quite feel sufficient to capture the life-changing impact that music can have on us. I actually wrote a bit about how music can change how we feel after releasing a track that I wrote when grieving my late father. Music is magic.”

Roch and I caught up over email, which has its own challenges when it comes to human connection. But as we talked about doing an interview, I thought one way to bring the humanity back would be to write and draw our conversation. Getting the chance to reflect more deeply on Roch’s words and perspectives while putting pen to paper emphasized her points so much to me. In a world that wants to erase our humanity, we can choose to reject that notion and lean deeper into what makes us human after all. That feeling comes through deeply in her words and her wordless music.

Enjoy our interview in full below. Human Music: Live Improvisations I is out now through Past Inside the Present.

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Through text and comics, 20th Century Ambient traces the recent history of ambient music to uncover how the genre has evolved and the role it plays in our daily lives. If you dig the combination of art and essays on Another Thought, I think you’ll love this book.

“Enriched by vivid profiles of the genre’s practitioners and capped by a list of essential tracks, it’s a quirky love letter to an enigmatic sound.” - Publishers Weekly

“Dad! Your book isn’t boring! It has pictures in it! It’s hilarious. Kids can read it too!” - my child

20th Century Ambient is out now from Bloomsbury Books.