Release date: 10/11/2024
Putting together a spoof TV commercial for Yikes, his early 2024 album, Momus decided to have fun by feeding his song lyrics into a new website called Udio. Using nothing more than a text prompt, the AI service produced an astonishing range of musical stylings: folk, opera, chanson, rap. The Scotsman instantly realised that a dizzying moment had arrived for songwriters and musicians: Artificial Intelligence is either a monster about to take our jobs and gobble us up, or a thrilling new tool, a toy, a source of joy. His next album would set out to answer the question: is this the death of our art, or a new start? The result is Ballyhoo, a Momus album which asks AI to supply the songwriter with K-pop backings... oh, and please add monophonic synths and an early 1980s Britfunk feel! This isn't an entirely random juxtaposition: South Korea's NewJeans, for instance, delve back to the age of Shakatak, Heatwave and Imagination, wrapping retro UK funk references in slick contemporary R&B production. It's a style Momus has flirted with in plenty of his forty-odd albums: a style appealing enough to drag an indie artist towards some of the pop mainstream's guilty pleasures. AI was the starting point here, but by curating, sculpting, extending, softening, replaying and remixing — even feeding some his own old songs into the mutating machinery — Momus took these compositions into familiar areas, replacing machine lyrics with his own (often based on deliberately mishearing machine Korean as quirky English: "the mondegreen method", he calls it). The result is something that could only have been made in the hot summer of 2024, at a moment when AI pop is a mess of fascinating paradoxes: slick yet glitchy, mainstream yet weird, boss and clown, our new robot overlord or just a pantomime pirate buccaneering through a weird parallel archive of its own invention. So, the answer to that question about whether it's going to gobble us up or become a new tool? Well, have a listen to Ballyhoo!
1. Plastic Seoul
2. Asylum
3. This Abuse
4. Kleptoglade
5. Singapore
6. The Enshittification of Everything
7. Three Trapped Tigers
8. Chromosomes
9. Catchy
10. Cruel
11. Reshape
12. The Fox in Winter
13. Glassy Menageries
14. Faraday
$23.00
Soon back in print on both LP and CD.Limited edition of 500 glacier color vinyl LP starts shipping October 20. Preorder and get instant download.CD repress...
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Available now: 2xLP clear with red swirl vinyl limited to 313, 2xLP black vinyl, and two CD variants: CD in Digipak with original cover art...
$36.00
Available now: Black vinyl 2xLP, CD in Digipak, digital. Vinyl remastered by Scott Hull at Masterdisk. CD tracklist:1. Tekka2. Dsco3. Velocity4. Fruitcake and Cookies5. Sept6....
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CD is available now. LP release date 9/19/2025 in two color variants.Limited edition of 500 x Coke bottle green with yellow swirl vinyl LPLimited edition...
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Release date: 9/12/2025Limited edition of 300 clear vinyl LP with download.A1. Kid Wave A2. Texture Memory A3. Bridge To A4. Bird at Sunrise A5. Lines...
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Release date: 9/12/20254xCD box. 53 tracksFactory Benelux presents an expanded 4xCD box set remaster of From The Hip, the pioneering 1984 electro album by cult Factory...
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New release date: 9/12/2025.Test pressing #3 approved! 2xLP+CD expected to arrive in August.Limited edition of 500. LP1 Agave Green color vinyl, LP2 Gold Medallion Tree...
$37.95
Release date: 7/25/2025 First time on vinyl. Limited edition of 1000 x 2xLP (Catskills transparent purple, Lost Tapes clear with gold swirl). Original cover art...