Participants 2025
About the TEAM
Botuoso comprises of Katherine Canoville, Don Bones and Harry Coney, successful innovators who came together to explore exciting collaborations between artificial intelligence and human creators.
Katherine Canoville is a successful world fusion pioneer who co-established Nation Records, having worked with Talvin Singh, Transglobal Underground, Asian Dub Foundation and Jah Wobble. Her knowledge and expertise in music management and track creation is invaluable to the group.
Don Bones is a songwriter, graphic designer and festivals organiser. A lover of diverse and original sounds, during the lockdown, he experimented with digital soundscapes, something he has continued ever since.
Harry Coney is the final member of the trio. A data analyst with an IT background, the advent of computer intelligence is of specific interest to him. With a love of music, and interests in philosophy and science, his varied background offers insight into the future role advanced technology will play in our lives.
About the SONG
Wolves On The Prowl is the compelling story of a young man’s journey into ever-spiralling debt, exploring and his never-ending life of poverty. Unable to afford food, months in arrears with his rent, bailiffs taking away his property despite working two jobs to feed his family, circumstances are dire, homelessness on the horizon, with nowhere to turn. Unable to sleep, borrowing to survive, reliance on loan sharks spells immediate danger, as does dealing drugs to pay off his debt and keep the wolves from his door.
A rap operatic musical score with a catchy singalong chorus is accompanied by a YouTube video featuring plenty of scary wolves, highlighting thought-provoking considerations which affect so many of us in the UK and beyond. Post-pandemic, the cost of living crisis continues to bite, food prices and energy bills rising, our poignant song and video highlights the problems so many of us face, battling against an uncaring system which continues to widen the gulf between the haves and have-nots.
About the HUMAN-AI PROCESS
Collaborating over zoom, BOTUOSO team members Don Bones, Katherine Canoville, and Harry Coney created Wolves On The Prowl using ChatGPT for inspiration, utilising the text-to-spoken-voice emulation capabilities of Eleven Labs (elevenlabs.io) and the operatic singing creation of Aimusic.so to convert human-devised lyrics into authentic-sounding rap and sung vocals, telling the story of one man’s dramatic struggle against debt.
The rap verses were not generated as a complete whole but rather as conservational dialogue, edited and compiled phrase-by-phrase and in some cases, word-by-word using Audacity freeware to format suitable pace and intonation creating authentically seamless delivery, artificial intelligence matched by human endeavour every step of the way. The operatic interludes were also sound-edited for tone but were generated as complete sections, in contrast to the rap.
The beats, bassline and instrumentation were not created by artificial intelligence with the exception of the trumpet which features several times throughout the track. Using a program called Controlla Voice which converts singing into instrumentation, we created a matching New Orleans-style trumpet melody to prelude the sung vocals, enhancing the tragedy of the dialogue with the irony of cabaret.
Likewise with the music, the video was created as a collaboration between artificial intelligence and human editing. Individual scenes were created via prompts using Magic Studio’s Art Generator, but most were edited and some completely redrawn via photoshop to ensure continuity between scenes when sequencing them together to create the complete accompanying video, thus creating a captivating yet meaningful visual experience.
Lyrics
SUNG INTRO:
Wolves on the prowl, you can hear them howl.
RAP:
Wolves at the door
Wolves at the door
Invoices in the inbox
Bills on the floor
Wolves at the door
Wolves at the door
Prices going up
Rising more and more
Wolves at the door
Wolves at the door
Debit card’s declined
At the grocery store
Wolves at the door
Wolves at the door
Rent’s overdue
Nothing to withdraw
Wolves at the door
Wolves at the door
There is no escape
From the wolves at the door
Wolves at the door
Wolves at the door
Widening divide
Between the rich and the poor
SUN CHORUS
Wolves are on the prowl
Wolves are on the prowl
Wolves are on the prowl
Wolves are on the prowl
Wolves are on the prowl
Wolves are on the prowl
Wolves are on the prowl
Wolves are on the prowl
RAP
All take, no give
No smooth with the rough
Wage slaving day and night
Will never be enough
Borrowing from friends
‘Til they’ve nothing to lend
Everywhere we turn
Always a dead end
Three mouths to feed
Another on the way
Cannot survive
Until the next payday
Begging and pleading
Ignored by the bank
Last week’s leftovers
Tasted so rank
Bailiffs at the door
With an evil grin
Huffed and they bluffed
And they let themselves in
Took away the telly
Replaced it twice since
In court next week
For no TV licence
Landlord wants us out
Six months in arrears
Nowhere to live
Gonna end in tears
Spent my last pennies
On a few cans of lager
Ease away the pain
It gets harder and harder
SUNG CHORUS
Wolves are on the prowl
Wolves are on the prowl
Wolves are on the prowl
Wolves are on the prowl
You can hear them growl
They go cheek by jowl
Their intention’s foul
Wolves are on the prowl
RAP
Problems mounting up
One and one makes two
Can’t evade the pack
When there’s more of them than you
Ain’t nowhere to run
Ain’t nowhere to hide
Ain’t no more believin’
No turning back the tide
Cannot sleep at night
On edge throughout the day
Doors are bolted shut
All we do is pray
Loan sharks after blood
Vampires armed with bats
If we don’t pay back in full
They’ll hunt us down like rats
Staying alive means keeping fit
Building-up the muscle
Can’t afford the gym fees
So all I do is hustle
Selling crack to settle debts
Making problems worse
Rival dealers out to snuff you
Til you end up in a hearse
Squabbling over scraps
Getting into bother
Have-nots encouraged to
Sink our fangs into each other
Constantly fed lies
Politicians spreading hate
While greedy oligarchs
Rip apart the welfare state
Wolves at the door
Wolves at the door
Prices going up
Rising more and more
Wolves at the door
Wolves at the door
Wide divide
Between the rich and poor
Until we all rise-up
The howls will prevail
The weakest in society
Devoured or locked in jail
Unite and stand together
Fighting back with claws
Reduce the cost of living
Fend off the predators
SUNG CHORUS
Wolves are on the prowl
Wolves are on the prowl
Wolves are on the prowl
Wolves are on the prowl