7 Vilnius DJs give world's tyrants the finger with a special album

The album’s cover has an AI-generated portrait of the ‘Ultimate Dictator’

A group of electronic music producers from Vilnius have released a techno album called Sound of Freedom using vocal samples from seven of the world’s contemporary dictators. The album is freely available online on Bandcamp, Soundcloud and Spotify and features an art cover that is notable on its own, as well.

The cover (seen on the photo) is an AI-generated composite portrait of 40 dictators, unsurprisingly titled “The Ultimate Dictator”. And if you’re curious – today’s average dictator is 100% male and about 63.85 years old.

Each of the seven techno tracks is aimed as a statement of resistance to the most notorious dictators in power today. Namely, these are the leaders of Russia, Eritrea, China, Syria, North Korea, Belarus and Myanmar.

The latest political art performance from Vilnius

Edmundas Pučkorius, manager of the Antidote project (the seven DJs behind the album), explained that this record represents their community’s belief in the transformative power of culture and, more specifically, electronic music.

Electronic music and raves have been used as a form of resistance and national unity in the context of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, including clean-up raves to restore devastated spaces and celebrations of the country’s Independence day in Vilnius. In general, Lithuania’s capital city is home to a burgeoning and active electronic music scene.

“For the first time since 2004, there are more autocratic states than democracies around the world. People ruled by a dictator are gripped within an information trap: propaganda, censorship, and fake narratives,” said Pučkorius. “In the Sound of Freedom, seven music producers directly resist such dictators by appropriating their words to send a message of hope and freedom — a move that would surely get the record banned in autocracies.”

The album and its cover image were unveiled in Vilnius’ Open Gallery — a unique open-air art space in the New Town district of the city.