Seven people from Bangalore who've known each other since before the name meant anything. College roommates, school friends, the crew that stuck. Twenty-odd years of late nights, bad decisions, and the arguments that never end — what if the Beatles never broke up? What if Dylan never went electric? Who's the better songwriter — and why are we always leaving the Stones out? What if the 27 club made it to 72?
The name came from someone else. Someone in the orbit who decided they were above the room — said they lived among "the lesser mortals." Three of them were sitting right there on the terrace — Ded, Surya, and Aditya. They took the ground they were dismissed to and turned it into a flag. That person went on to run one of India's most popular publications. The lesser mortals made a band.
The terrace. Bangalore, circa always.
The instruments are artificial intelligence. Every guitar line, every drum fill, every vocal take — generated through AI tools, directed by one human architect. Vivek built these seven characters from the people he's known half his life. He heard Madan's voice before any machine did. He knew the song Surya would play before the fretboard existed. The tools make the sound. But the taste is human. The songwriting decisions are human. The question of what's worth keeping and what gets cut — that's always been human.
“
Not here as a prophet with velvet applause — only a witness who names what he saw.
— Needle Keeps Turning, The Lesser Mortals
Seven friends who couldn't get in the same room — not because the music stopped, but because life got in the way. Careers, cities, families, two decades of "we should really do this." AI didn't replace the band. AI made the band possible. The sound they'd been talking about for twenty years finally had a way out. Very mortal. Very lesser. And now, very loud.
Finally in the same room.
Witnesses, not prophets. They didn't start the fire — but they're the ones still holding the flame. The question was never whether AI could make music. The question was whether a human could make it mean something.
How the Sound Gets Made
Write lyrics, ideas, plan tunes and arrangements
Song Writing
Pen & paper — the seed
Build perfect prompts for Suno & TopMediai using Agent skills
Prompts
Claude (Anthropic) — the architect
Generate, listen, iterate — lots of listening
Music
Suno · TopMediai — the sound
Visual strategy, prompts, and generation
Visuals
Higgsfield · OpenArt · NanoBananaPro — the faces
Video cuts, graphics, and final production polish
Editing
KapWing · Canva — the cut
Share, listen to the audience, loop back
Feedback
Social media — the loop
AI is the instrument. Vivek is the musician. The Lesser Mortals are the band.
