Louie Vega and Msaki’s “Mercy Of Time” brings together deep songwriting, rich musicianship, and rhythm with a wide human reach. The track dropped recently on Vega Records; the single features Msaki’s vocal writing and performance, Vega’s production language, Cuban pianist and composer Axel Tosca, and Manoo (@therealdjmanoo), whose drum work gives the record one of its most physical signatures.
That personnel list already says plenty about the record. “Mercy Of Time” is built around collaboration, touch, and musical exchange rather than the flattened perfection that often comes from chasing a frictionless result. Msaki’s voice carries the emotional center, Tosca brings the harmonic detail, Vega shapes the song’s house foundation, and Manoo pushes the groove into motion with the kind of rhythmic feel that cannot be reduced to a preset.
The interview below turns that musical context toward the question of AI-assisted production.
Manoo does not reject new tools outright, but he is wary of what gets lost when music becomes too easy to assemble. He talks about mistakes, rawness, the social side of making records, the search for the right beat, and the line between being assisted by technology and being replaced by it.
For a record like “Mercy Of Time,” that distinction feels especially clear: the human part is not decoration. It is the reason the track breathes.
Interview With Manoo
As music-production tools get easier to use and their outputs get “better,” which part of the process should artists protect most?
I think originality and uniqueness are essential, even when inspired by an artist or a style of sound, a tone, etc.
The right to make mistakes, because sometimes mistakes can arise from very interesting ideas. Current tools save a lot of time in the process, but isn’t there also a part of the path that is sacrificed? The social side, for example; the emulation of meeting up and trying things together. The search for sound, for frequency, looking for the perfect beat. Nowadays, you just have to open a preset and include the characteristics to create an almost finished, clean product.
I remember some house productions from the ’90s; the sound was raw, with an incomparable grain that they did not have in all these modern facilities.
Before automating part of the workflow, what should producers ask themselves?
Will I save time on setting up the automation? Should I choose ease? Won’t I fall into the ready-made formula? Am I creating a product that will last?
How can artists tell when a tool has moved from helping the track to steering the track?
In absolute terms, it is from my idea that the work will be born.
We must ask ourselves what remains of my original idea once the product is finished. Where will the tool allow me to go? Will I keep my original idea in mind, or how far will I let myself be carried away by an idea that the tool has produced? Am I assisted or replaced… that’s the question.
Where do artists need clearer boundaries around AI-assisted work?
In the recognition of the human part and the AI part, this is where ethics come into play. It was a debate for some who saw tracks entirely made by AI and sold without any mention. Some are recognizable, but for others the blur exists. Hence the desire for some platforms to be transparent about this and to notify AI’s role in the creation process. Using AI, we feed the algorithm, which, from my work, will increase its database to satisfy other requests; the problem of copyright will then arise.
How should producers think about AI as a pressure on behavior, rather than another tool category?
The problem is that it redefines our way of thinking.
AI should be seen as a collaborative partner rather than just a database or a performer. It is a tool for exploring the field of possibilities and then letting the human choose, but will the human still be free to think for himself or is he under influence?
In the medium term, it naturally modifies tastes, leading to a kind of standardization. It changes the direction of the effort as a result: quick, effective results. We’re no longer “looking for the perfect beat” because AI has already found it, but time saved, with less effort, and therefore at a lower cost.
Closing Thoughts From The Editor
Manoo’s answers land because they do not treat AI as a simple good-or-bad question.
His concern is more exact: what happens to taste when the search gets shortened? What happens to rhythm when the grain is removed too early? What happens to a producer’s ear when the machine learns to hand back clean results before the artist has spent enough time getting lost?
That connects directly to my interview with Louie Vega on bookings, community, and the return of Funki Cadets. Vega’s work has long been tied to collaboration, mentorship, musicianship, and house music as a lived practice rather than a frictionless product. “Mercy Of Time” fits that wider tradition. The record depends on people bringing different musical lives into the same room, not on a system producing a convincing imitation of that exchange.
The rawness Manoo remembers from ’90s house also sits beside Death on the Balcony’s interview on human touch in the studio. That conversation centered on preserving the idea, the personal mark, and the strange studio moments that cannot be faked by a faster process. Manoo is circling a related problem with different language. A record can be cleaner than ever and still miss the grain that made older house productions feel alive.
“Mercy Of Time” makes the argument easier to hear.
Msaki’s vocal presence, Axel Tosca’s musicianship, Vega’s production, and Manoo’s drums all point toward a house record built from exchange and touch. The song’s emotional force depends on the fact that each contributor brings something specific that could not be summoned from a prompt.
The groove works because it carries human timing, not because it arrives perfectly sterilized.
That is the strongest read on Manoo’s position. He is not asking producers to abandon new tools. He is asking them to notice what those tools may quietly train them to stop doing. Searching, failing, meeting, trying, deleting, hearing the wrong sound become the right idea — those parts of the process are slower, but they are also where a record can become personal. “Mercy Of Time” is a reminder that house music still needs that human residue.
Will Vance is a professional music producer who has been involved in the industry for the better part of a decade and has been the managing editor at Magnetic Magazine since mid-2022. In that time period, he has published thousands of articles on music production, industry think pieces and educational articles about the music industry. Over the last decade as a professional music producer, Will Vance has also ran multiple successful and highly respected record labels in the industry, including Where The Heart Is Records as well as having launched a new label with a focus on community through Magnetic Magazine. When not running these labels or producing his own music, Vance is likely writing for other top industry sites like Waves or the Hyperbits Masterclass or working on his upcoming book on mindfulness in music production. On the rare chance he's not thinking about music production, he's probably running a game of Dungeons and Dragons with his friends which he has been the dungeon master for for many years.
