https://fold.bandcamp.com/album/10-past-midnight

The EP’s title references our debut LP’s closing track Two Past Midnight, which is itself a quote from Fannie Lou Hamer who was referencing the Doomsday Clock. She meant that it was then well beyond the point when we should have taken action to save ourselves. Rather than two minutes to midnight it was two minutes past midnight, as it felt then, and now to us it feels at least 8 minutes later, metaphorically speaking.

The title track assembles a narrative solely from vocals that appeared across our debut LP, including newly restored archival speech samples. Voices include John Lennon, Malcolm X, Bruce Lee, Mr Gee, Fannie Lou Hamer, Kurt Vonnegut and Jimmy Carter. The underlying music was largely composed on a 1998 on a beige Macintosh G3 and reimagined here 27 years later. Full marks if you spot the one chopped up music sample from another group. Bonus points for spotting the music samples from our own debut album that are also woven in both here and throughout the EP.

Narrative Control consists of another repurposed, previously unreleased relic from 2002 that’s now been fused with the incisive words of behavioural analyst Thomas Karat. He unpicks how our consent is manufactured through narrative control as it defines modern propaganda. The music was written & produced in the aftermath of 9/11—I was in living New York at the time—and reflects much of my own feelings at the time. Today has a similar feeling to me so it seemed appropriate to finally deploy.

The opener is a short piece graced by Bertrand Russell, also sporting a newly restored voice, with emphasis on hopes for peace. The effect of the cutting edge restoration techniques used on all the vocals across the EP makes these voices of the past feel almost unnervingly present at times.

Along with the four new tracks, four never before released, newly mixed & mastered instrumentals from the original album are included as bonus tracks. That should complete a few collections out there.

The EP will only be available on Bandcamp and Ampwall. We are not releasing music on any streaming platforms for the foreseeable future because we’re fed up with the broken models and unethical investments these platforms engage in, particularly Spotify. We refuse to chase the unfairly diminishing returns of streaming royalties or indirectly support the military-industrial complex. In time we will remove all of our music from these platforms, pending certain legal & logistical solutions.

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Taking centre stage, MotorMouF will be our first actual proper front man since we kicked off in 2012. We will be taking a hiatus from gigs while we work on our new show that we aim to get on the road by later this year.