GULFF’s second single "the rumo(u)r" — out May 12 — turns AI's destructive aural byproduct into a foreboding anthem. The track will play in a four-day sound installation in Chelsea, a nod to the overlap of the art world’s Frieze Week and NYC’s inaugural “AI Week”.
BROOKLYN / MANCHESTER - FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE - GULFF — ****the remote collaboration between electronic musician and composer Owain Kelly (NO CEREMONY///) in Manchester and artist and musician Tod Lippy (Esopus magazine) in Brooklyn — releases their second single, "the rumo(u)r," on Tuesday, May 12, built from field recordings and broadcast news samples documenting noise pollution from AI data centers.
Flipping the script on an industry built on unlicensed access to artists' work, “the rumo(u)r” turns AI's destructive aural by-product into a foreboding anthem. The “datacore-center” track, GULFF’s second single, is out May 12 and anchors a four-day sound installation in Chelsea timed to the overlap of Frieze Week and NYC’s inaugural AI Week. It leads with a heart-pounding digital pulse overlaid by static and joined by the autotuned urgency of Lippy’s vocals, which sound as if they’re being broadcast from inside the LLM.
As the track’s undulating layers compound, Kelly’s production introduces samples from broadcast news reports — the voices of miserable, defeated-sounding people discussing their inescapable local data center noise; an unrelenting, low-frequency hum that penetrates walls and car windows while falling outside their local noise ordinances.
The single follows GULFF's February 2026 debut with the single "error". Both tracks are drawn from the band's forthcoming self-titled LP — a 39-minute record built almost entirely on found audio from “the soundscapes of late-stage capitalism”: robocall voicemails, QVC shopping channel footage, a Meta AI cooking demo layered against a men's-rights podcast, crowd noise from a Trump golf tournament, and the 2600Hz tone once used in phone phreaking — all collected by a process Kelly and Lippy call “digital field recording”. The full album is out September 25.
Early listeners have called “the rumo(u)r” "server room ASMR but make it existential" that is “unhinged in the best way” and noted Lippy’s vocals are “giving Mothman” over a mix that is “Blair Witch for the broligharchy.”
The release date for “the rumo(u)r” falls during New York City’s inaugural “AI Week” and on the eve of Frieze Week NYC 2026, and the installation is a nod to both: It will be playing as a layer in the duo’s a/v installation, “Data Center Noise Listening Party,” at Chelsea’s Printed Matter bookstore (231 11th Ave.) from May 14 to May 17, free and open to the public during Printed Matter store hours.
In “Data Center Noise Listening Party,” visitors will be invited into an individual screen-and-headphones experience comprising a a series of single-channel videos assembled from people's own audio and video recordings of the noise coming off data centers in their neighborhoods. They can toggle between this experience and a sneak peek of the new “the rumo(u)r” music video.
Directed by Lippy, the video layers data center maps, thermal imaging of methane emissions, sound waves, AI-generated advertising, and phone footage of an out-of-control dancing robot.
The installation runs as backlash against AI data centers escalates to gunfire and Molotov cocktails. In early April, an Indianapolis resident fired thirteen rounds into a city-county councilmember’s home, leaving a handwritten note reading "No Data Centers" on the doorstep. Three days later, a 20-year-old from the Houston area was arrested after allegedly throwing a handmade explosive at OpenAI CEO Sam Altman's San Francisco home and threatening to burn down the company's headquarters. A Data Center Watch report counts at least 142 activist groups across 24 states organizing against new construction and roughly $64 billion of projects blocked or delayed over two years as awareness grows.
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GULFF is Tod Lippy and Owain Kelly. Lippy is an artist, editor, and writer in Brooklyn; he founded the arts and culture publication Esopus, which ran for 25 issues over 15 years and commissioned music from contributors including Grizzly Bear, Neko Case, and Sharon Van Etten. Kelly is a Welsh electronic musician and composer based in Manchester; as one half of NO CEREMONY/// he toured with Pixies and Foals and recorded a Maida Vale session for BBC Radio 1, and his film and theatre work has been commissioned by BAFTA, BFI, Arts Council England, and Sky Arts. They have been collaborating remotely since late 2025 and have never met in person.
