Meet Breezer, The Band Behind The AI Oasis Album

Photos: Mark Richards 

The rise of AI technology seems to have skyrocketed in the last few months with ChatGPT being able to write an essay for you instantly and videos of former American presidents playing Minecraft together plaguing the internet.

It was only a matter of time before the internet was gifted an AI version of the band that made the song synonymous with the guy who picks up a guitar at a party.

Like basically everyone on the internet a few weeks ago, I was hit with the news of, the new Oasis album that isn’t actually Oasis, it’s AI. My first thought was ‘trust this to happen, it was only about time some Britpop fans got together and made this’. But what I didn’t know was my friend, Lloyd Davies who I met skateboarding in Barcelona was the bassist of the band that made the album, Breezer. It was them putting a Liam Gallagher vocal filter over the lead singer, Bobby Geraghty’s vocals. AISIS - The Lost Tapes the album that took over the internet and international media is actually just the new Breezer album. Not only did they go viral, but it also brought the band together and they are playing a show in London on the 10th of June, if you’re in London you can buy tickets here.

I hit up Lloyd to have a chat with him and Bobby to get the lowdown on what could be the best publicity stunt in recent history.

First of all, who are you guys?

Bobby: I’m Bobby Geraghty, frontman of the band Breezer, I sing, play guitar and write the tunes with Chris who is the other guitarist in the band.

Lloyd: I’m the bass player of Breezer. 

How are you guys coping with the newfound fame?

Bobby: It’s really cool. We’re just excited that people are seemingly enjoying it. We did it for a laugh, so it’s sort of gotten out of hand.

Lloyd: I haven’t been involved in too much, it was just a laugh. Bobby sent me the song, being like ‘oi check out this lost Oasis tune I found’ and I opened it up and it was one of our songs with Liam’s [Gallagher] voice on it and I was like what is going on? Bobby told me what he did and was like let’s just put it online for a laugh. Then all of a sudden, we were sending screenshots into the group chat being like ‘it’s at 100,000 plays, what the fuck’ [laughs]. We were laughing when it got to 500 plays, we were like ‘we’re quite happy that at least 500 people have listened to it'. Now, how many is it on now Bob?

Bobby: I think it’s on like 500,000 now [laughs]. Seeing the YouTube comments have been crazy, it’s so nice seeing that people like it. I’m the singer but I’m not even singing on it and for me, this is mad.

“We did it for a laugh, so it’s sort of gotten out of hand.”

— Bobby

How did the idea come up to do AISIS?

Bobby: Basically, I saw a kid on YouTube who put Liam’s voice over Oasis songs that Noel [Gallagher] was singing using AI. I messaged him asking how he did it and he wouldn’t tell me. So, I went on this mad YouTube search spree, and I figured out how to do it. Breezer wasn’t playing at that time either, we had played our last show, last year, so I was like I’m just going to freak the guys out and put Liam over the top of our songs. Everyone was into it and were like we should put it up. So, I put it online and it’s taken on its own beast from that point. The original idea came from seeing other people on YouTube doing AI stuff and me just being like I could do it better than that [laughs].

Lloyd: Also, the thing that’s different about what you did was that the songs were original songs that we had written, so there are grey areas around the legalities of it, because it has been written and performed by real people, but it’s just got a filter over it to sound like Liam. I think that’s what people couldn’t handle, because all these big Oasis fans in Argentina were commenting ‘greetings from Argentina, we love you’. It’s insane.    

That’s crazy. I guess it is so confusing if you don’t know what’s going on. Had you used AI stuff before?

Bobby: No, this is definitely the first time, and I don’t know how to code or anything. It’s actually easier than you think though. 

Were you inspired by the videos of Kanye West singing Taylor Swift songs?

Bobby: Yeah, that’s kind of how I first found it. The Kanye ones were the first kind of big AI thing people were trying out, getting him to cover stupid songs. Then I found myself in a YouTube hole with it. Searching it out, until I found the Liam one.

So, you guys weren’t even planning on releasing a new album?

Bobby: No, not at all. Well, because everyone lives so far apart it’s hard to play many shows and practice. Some of these were written by Chris and I ten years ago, with a project in mind, which never really came to life until 2021, just at the end of lockdown and it went from there. We wrote four more songs, and we have eight songs in total now which ended up being the album.

Ten years is so long to have music on ice like that. How did you guys end up coming together as a band?

Bobby: Basically, I went for a pint at the pub with Chris and John and we were talking about one of our songs and were like ‘this tune is pretty good we should probably put it out’ and by the time we finished our beers the song was uploaded to Spotify. Then about a day later it was played on BBC Radio One, which is the big radio station here. So, we were like ‘shit we don’t even have a band, everyone seems to be loving this and we got Lloyd involved and we played our first show, it sold out and it started snowballing from there. We only played about three more shows after that though, one of them was supporting Primal Scream [laughs]. It was going pretty well but it was hard because the music industry didn’t want to hear about guitar bands, especially ones that sound like us, which is pretty gutting. So, we kind of put it on ice for a bit. Then this whole AISIS came up and now we booked a show in London, and everyone seems to be loving it. It’s pretty cool for us. It’s like the best marketing we could’ve imagined. 

It's probably the best promotional stunt in recent history [laughs].

Bobby: Unintentionally [laughs].

Lloyd: At least it forced us to put the album out instead of it sitting on a hard drive [laughs].

I saw that Grimes wants people to make deep fake music with her. It seems like you guys have started something.
Bobby: Well, I know for a fact, this is the first-ever original AI album. Before we did it nobody had put AI over their own songs and released it as a mixtape, so we have that in the Guinness Book of World Records. I’m seeing lots of people doing it now. I did see the Grimes thing, but like write your own songs [laughs]. 

How quickly did it take to all blow-up?

Bobby: I think it had 2,000 views in the first two days and then The Guardian wrote a piece on it and then it just exploded. It was all in the papers in the UK, we were on page three of this newspaper, The Daily Star which is a really shit paper, there was a naked woman next to our news article [laughs]. When you get to that point there are so many eyes on you and everyone wants to check it out. Four or five days in it went crazy. 

Lloyd: Then people kept sending Tweets to Liam asking if he’d heard it and we were just expecting him to go crazy about it and he came back and said, ‘Mad as fuck, I sound mega’. We were shocked we got Liam’s blessing and he said it was actually good and he hasn’t gone ‘oh fuckin’ hell, this sounds shit’. That was all you could ever wish for, him to say something like that.

Bobby: I think that’s the nicest thing he’s ever said.

Lloyd: Then there was a media frenzy about his Tweet. It was crazy. We got like two rounds of publicity.

People are going off saying you’ve revolutionised the music industry. What do you have to say about that?

Bobby: When I get taken to court, I’m going to say that [laughs]. It was just a bit of a joke, but now we are here.

A lot of people thought it was all AI-generated, like all the music and drumming was, but it can’t do that, it can just replace what’s already there. I think maybe people were shocked because the songs were better than they thought they were going to be and it’s kind of like you can have your favourite frontman singing on your songs and I think people were like ‘you opened the floodgates with this sort of thing’. Normally you don’t get to work with your favourite bands, and now suddenly you can, which is pretty rad.

Yeah, would you say this was all a complete joke? 

Bobby: Well, it kind of was but it wasn’t. Liam is a person who has heavily influenced us, but it was a joke to put the filter over the vocals. So, it started out as a bit of a joke, but now turned into something pretty cool. It’s forced the band to come back together and play a final show and release the album.

You guys have done so many interviews because of this. What’s the craziest media outlet that you’ve been interviewed by?

Bobby: There was this crypto magazine that we did an interview with which was pretty weird, so all the crypto bros absolutely love Breezer at the moment [laughs]. NFT and climbing.

Lloyd: Send us some money though, come on.

Fuck money, send you guys some Bitcoin.

Bobby: Yes, please.

Are there any other AI albums you’d like to see exist?

Bobby: No [laughs].

Lloyd: You can’t say that [laughs].

Bobby: We already made the one that should’ve existed.

Lloyd: To be fair, I don’t know how I would even feel about it if I wasn’t in the band. People were commenting on YouTube like can you do a Nirvana one or a The Stone Roses one and I just don’t know if I’m cool with that because they’re not here to even approve it. We were nervous to see how Liam would even take it and for him to say what he did it has kind of given us the blessing. If someone’s dead and you’re releasing music is a bit like what would they think? They’d be literally turning in their grave. Could you imagine if Kurt Cobain found out that someone did that? He would lose his mind. He wouldn’t be cool with it. He was over the music industry in the ‘90s, let alone what they’re doing now.

I think Oasis, is the perfect band to do it with because there’s always been jokes surrounding them.

Bobby: Yeah, they were a bit of a joke. They’ve come full circle it’s such a strange thing. Maybe because they were so big, everyone wanted to hate them in the end. Then they went away, and everyone was like actually this is pretty cool. So doing it when they’re not around and so many people want to hear that stuff now, kind of feels like it is at the perfect time, inadvertently. Fuck knows, maybe it’ll force them to get back together.

Lloyd: That was the whole thing. When we were writing the tunes, we were like let’s write songs for people who like OASIS because they’re never going to get back together. So, if they reform you’ve literally done the job.

Bobby: Yeah, job done.

Before we go. What do you think it is about Wonderwall that makes anyone who picks up a guitar at a party start playing?

Bobby: I don’t even know man. I don’t even like that song, that’s the funny thing. I guess anyone can play that song, can’t they?

Lloyd: It’s also so popular and yeah, it is easy to play. It’s a really simple song and people who pick up a guitar and go onto a website to find the top ten songs to learn on guitar. Then someone gets pissed at a party, sees a guitar, and starts playing it.