AON: Two Albums, One Vision

AON sits at the heart of the Finn Moray project. It is the first major step in a long term vision to build a living musical map of Scotland, where every town and village has its own song and where success is shared fairly with the communities that inspired it.

From the outset, AON was designed as an album in two parts: The Call and The Gathering. Together they show how human creativity, digital tools and AI can work in balance, not in competition, to serve story, place and people.

The Call: AI as a creative partner

Every song begins simply, with Finn choosing the story he wants to tell. He sits down with his Freshman guitar, finds the chords and melody by hand, and writes all the lyrics himself until the shape of the song feels honest and clear. Only once that human foundation is in place do the digital tools enter the process.

AI then plays a positive and very practical role. It helps Finn test arrangements, explore textures and get closer to the sound in his head more quickly and at lower cost. That means more songs can be created for more places, without needing a traditional studio for every early draft. AI here is a creative partner and an accelerator, not the author.

There is also honesty about the limitations. AI generated stems can sometimes arrive with artefacts effectively baked into the audio. However skilled the engineer, some of these marks are difficult, and occasionally impossible, to remove in the mix. That is not a question of effort or care. It is simply the current state of the technology.

This is where Nano comes in. As producer and mix engineer on The Call, Nano has pushed the AI sourced material as far as it will go, protecting the feel of each song while working around the constraints in the stems. His work has helped The Call reach a standard where the songs can carry their emotional weight into the world, proud of both their strengths and their imperfections. At the same time, he has been working with Finn to plan the next phase.

Finn says:“For me the song always starts with a story, a guitar and a blank page. I choose the story, write the lyrics and find the chords before anything else. AI helps me move from that first spark to a finished track faster and more affordably, but the heart of it stays human. The responsibility to honour places and give back to communities is something you cannot outsource.”

The Gathering: bringing the songs home

Behind the scenes, Finn and Nano are already working strategically on The Gathering, the second half of AON. If The Call is about empowerment, access and experimentation, The Gathering is about depth, interpretation and place.

The plan is clear. The songs from AON will be reimagined and recorded from scratch with real musicians and local artists from the regions the songs represent. Finn and Nano will develop the arrangements together, then bring them to life in traditional recording settings. The melodic and lyrical core of Finn’s writing is protected, while singers and players from each area are encouraged to interpret and own their parts. The result is that each track gains a new dimension: the same song, re-rooted in the voices and textures of the community. It is a genuine win win.

This sits directly within the Finn Moray Social Compact, which commits fifty percent of all net profits from the project to charitable, community and cultural initiatives in Scotland, with regional songs linked back to the areas they honour. In practice, that means the music does not just remember a place, it returns value to it.

Nano says: “What interests me about this project is not just the sound, but the model. Finn uses AI and digital tools where they help, I help at that point to mix and master the songs, to see what's possible, then we move into fully traditional recording so the songs can live with real players in real rooms. I understand that the wider vision is to inspire musicians everywhere to use whatever tools they have to make authentic music, and to drive the value back fairly to the people and places it comes from. That is a future I am proud to help build.”

A working model for fair, modern music

Together, The Call and The Gathering form a practical template for the future of music making. AI is used as a creative accelerator and cost saver, never as a substitute for human intent. Traditional production is used to deepen, localise and humanise the work. The Social Compact ensures that when the music finds an audience, a fair share of the benefit flows back to artists and communities, not only to the centre.

For listeners, it means two ways to experience AON. For musicians and communities, it shows that you can embrace new tools, stay true to your sound and still build a fairer, more grounded way for music to move through the world.

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