Zeds Dead on sampling in the AI era: “AI has no history”

“AI has no history.”

That’s Zachary Rapp-Rovan, Hooks of Zeds Dead, in a MusicTech interview by Harry Levin published on October 30, 2026. The duo has built nearly 20 years of music on samples, and Rapp-Rovan says the history behind a sample is what interests him right now. Generative AI, he said, is “an average of things that sound similar.”

He isn’t against every AI tool, though. He told MusicTech he’s “totally into” stem separation and voice changing.

Levin spoke to Rapp-Rovan and Dylan Mamid (DC) minutes before their first Los Angeles show of the Journey of a Lifetime tour, which closes with 2 sold-out nights at Grand Park before an extended break.

What did Zeds Dead say about AI in the MusicTech interview?

Levin asked what they think of sampling in the AI age, given that their show puts the source material right on the screen.

“Where I’m at now, the interest is more in the history. AI has no history. It’s an average of things that sound similar,” Rapp-Rovan said.

“I can’t speak for where my interest might go, but I know for sure people will sample stuff that’s from AI.”

“I’m sure they already are,” Mamid added.

Rapp-Rovan conceded the comparison to early sampling: “Much like with sampling, people were very against it, but it was an art. I’m sure there is art in AI.” Then he said where he stands today.

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I'm seeing it as something that could be catastrophic to the thing that I love, which is searching for some kind of connection with something bigger than myself.

Mamid said he hasn’t engaged with AI much. “I’ve tried out the tools just to see what they were like, and it tends to be sort of weird. It creeps me out when I see what it comes back with.”

Is generative AI just hyper-sampling? Zeds Dead’s answer

Levin put it to them that generative AI is, to a degree, the same as sampling, because the models are built on music that existed before. “It’s like hyper-sampling,” Mamid said.

Rapp-Rovan agreed, up to a point. “There’s something legit in a way because it is human work. The basis of it all is something that really happened.”

Mamid added, “You’re in dialogue with humanity. You’re not in dialogue with some unknown being.”

Then the catch. Rapp-Rovan said AI audio might carry “some weird artefacts”, the way image models used to draw extra fingers, and joked, “You might be injecting some evil into your songs.”

Levin suggested the difference is intention, since the duo uses samples to explore history. “It’s in support of human culture. Not denigrating it,” Mamid said.

In June, Lucian Grainge likened responsible AI to the arrival of sampling from the label side.

The AI tools Zeds Dead’s Hooks does use: stem separation and voice changing

Rapp-Rovan draws his line at generating finished music.

“I’m totally into some of the AI tools like stem separation and voice changing,” he said. “But the idea that, out of the box, you can be making stuff on the same level as someone who’s been doing it for a long time, it does seem more bad than good at the moment.”

That’s the same split A$AP Rocky drew in Complex on October 14, when he called pulling the vocals off a finished song a job for AI. If you want to try the tool side yourself, here are the AI stem splitters I tested, and Voice Swap covers the voice-changing side.

Zeds Dead’s sampling history, from Eyes on Fire to Return to the Return

Zeds Dead come from Toronto, and the name is a nod to Pulp Fiction. Their first major single started as a bootleg of Blue Foundation’s Eyes on Fire (2007) before it got an official release.

Their recent albums, Return to the Spectrum of Intergalactic Happiness (2025) and Return to the Return (2026), sample Duke Ellington, Norma Jean Wright, Scarface and Blue Velvet. On stage, they play the source video next to the beat, like Ann Peebles singing her 1973 recording of I Can’t Stand the Rain during Sweet Memories.

“When you sample a record, you sample the magic of that room,” Rapp-Rovan told MusicTech. “There are things that you can bring out in someone playing the piano that are only in that one recording.”

After Grand Park, the duo is stepping off the road. “We always wondered what it would be like if we focused on unbridled creativity,” Rapp-Rovan said. MusicTech didn’t report a return date for Zeds Dead.