An Austin musician and a photographer are betting that slow, human-made landscape films can cut through a flood of machine-generated music online. Walker Lukens and Chad Wadsworth are launching Slow Atlas, a project that spans a YouTube channel, a photo book with its own soundtrack, and a free concert, with the first film set to premiere Friday.
The project began as something much smaller. Lukens originally planned to travel to Iceland to record an album at a remote studio, but, as CultureMap Austin reports, “the idea soon outgrew a single album.” Wadsworth, a photographer whose work has appeared in Rolling Stone, The New York Times, and Texas Monthly, has known Lukens since the two met at Float Fest in 2017. He called the resulting project “a pure passion project,” per the outlet's report.
A YouTube Channel Built On Human-Shot Footage
The centerpiece is Slow Atlas TV, a YouTube channel pairing hour-long films of remote landscapes with original scores. The team shoots all of its own footage, and a different musician scores each film, according to the same CultureMap report. New films are planned every two weeks, with the series later expected to travel to West Texas, Hawaii, and Costa Rica.
The first film, Slow Atlas 1, is scheduled to premiere Friday, featuring music from English pedal steel player Joe Harvey Whyte set to footage of Reynisfjara, Iceland's black sand beach. Lukens, an Austin musician, singer-songwriter, and producer who has released several albums under his own name, has experimented with pairing visuals and sound before — he previously paired a photography zine with his album Accessible Beauty.
Pushing Back Against AI Slop
Lukens said frustration with the flood of machine-made ambient music online helped spur the project. “There's just so much slop out there … literally AI slop,” he told CultureMap, adding that he believes streaming services have removed the ritual of releasing music and that online ambient music increasingly comes from machines rather than people. His takeaway, per the outlet: people should relax with things made by humans.
That frustration lines up with a broader industry reckoning. Spotify has said it removed more than 50 million tracks that appeared to be AI-generated from its curated recommendations so far this year, according to NBC News, while The Guardian reported the company said it had pulled about 50 million songs it considered AI slop from user recommendations over the past year. Spotify requires “AI persona” badges on artist profiles that don't represent a real human being, but it does not require individual AI-generated songs to be labeled, the Guardian noted. NBC News reported that Spotify built its detection on listener skip and ignore patterns from the prior six months, combined with metadata and third-party tools, while acknowledging that identifying suspicious content could grow harder as generative AI evolves.
A Photo Book With A Soundtrack That Shifts By The Page
Alongside the film series, the duo is releasing Slow Atlas: Iceland, a photo book pairing Wadsworth's photographs from the trip with an original album by Lukens. The book uses a phone app connected by Bluetooth to headphones, and its music shifts as readers turn each page. Wadsworth said the format lets viewers and listeners create their own narrative, per CultureMap's report.
The book is available for preorder through its publisher, Radioposter, which lists it as available this month, and it's slated to reach bookstores and record stores across Texas. Copies will sell for $45 at the project's launch show.
Free Launch Concert Set For Cesar Chavez Street
The launch concert and book-release party is scheduled for November 20 at Central Machine Works on East Cesar Chavez Street. Lukens, Portland ambient artist Amulets, and the duo of Jamie Lidell and Luke Schneider are each set to improvise a live score to Slow Atlas footage projected on large screens, with DJ Starflake opening the night, according to Central Machine Works' event calendar. Doors are set for 7 p.m. and live music for 8 p.m., with admission free with an RSVP. Limited-edition vinyl of the Amulets score is also expected to be for sale alongside the book.
Slow Atlas is planned to return January 23, 2027, with a $20 show at Austin Film Society. The duo also plans to host a SXSW showcase at Central Presbyterian Church on March 19, 2027, priced at $10 or free with a festival badge.
