Fold - Shut Down

Single · March 6th, 2026 · Digital download, streaming platforms (apart from Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon & Meta)

Listen & download on Bandcamp

Despite having to step back from recording and live performances, the need to process the growing dread of global events unexpectedly yielded something that we urgently had to share

As some of you may know from recent communications, we’ve had to take a step back from making records and playing shows due to many factors, not least of which the cost of living crisis. However, something emerged in recent weeks from trying to process the darkness, dread and sense of doom that pervades us all at present. Given the rapid escalation of global events, we felt compelled to share it at very short notice though it is itself an ominous piece.

And so on March 6 we released Shut Down, featuring the late Mike Ruppert—speaking prophetically back in 2009—who gave us his blessing to use his speech not long before he died in 2014.

For me (Seth) it is therapeutic—even cathartic—to walk toward the fear and embrace it, which is what I hope this track will help people do in this moment. If what Mike is forewarning does come to pass, we’ll have assisted with the emotional preparation and some may then be a bit more ready for what comes next.

NB we are no longer releasing on Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon or Meta but you will be able to find Shut Down everywhere else soon — we’re just waiting for YouTube and a few more platforms to approve it.

Lastly, the photograph on the cover is from New York City on 9/11. I first came across Mike Ruppert’s work in the early 2000s through his peerless, holistic investigation of 9/11. I was living in New York on 9/11 (Brooklyn, thankfully) and my autistic brain has never been able to let go of not really knowing what happened that day, though I am quite satisfied that I know why. Mike’s Crossing the Rubicon is an incredibly important book in terms of a broader understanding or mapping of our epoch in my opinion, especially as it predates AI and even Internet 2.0.

All listening options

Stream on YouTube

Stream on Soundcloud

Fold · Fold – Shut Down

Press

“Sadly, Leeds outfit Fold have been forced to relegate fighting the man through the medium of music to the back seat lately due to a variety of factors. So new single Shut Down is appropriately named to some extent though they’ve not completely abandoned their people because – well – here is a new single. In classic Fold manner it underpins a politically progressive speech with suitably atmospheric new music. In this case, that speech is one by the late Mike Ruppert who gave the nod for Fold to use it all the way back in 2009. Back then, Ruppert was predicting that industrialised human society would shut down the next time there was a massive spike in the cost of oil which would collapse the global economy by pricing itself out of the market. Turns out they expedited its release due to the current dick-swinging contest in the Middle East so the music is suitably insectoid and ominous.“

Monkeyboxing

“The Fold collective (subject of this very in-depth interview I did last year) say they’ve had to “take a step back from making records & playing shows due to many factors, not least of which the cost of living crisis”, but nevertheless felt compelled to release this track in response to “the darkness, dread and sense of doom that pervades us all at present.” It’s a great example of the curious comfort and sense of togetherness that can result from music which — at face value — is ominous and dark. Rich with front-foot beats and reverberating chimes, and featuring prescient spoken words from the late Mike Ruppert, this is vital listening.”

Music Observer