MANCHESTER, UK — FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE — GULFF — the 100-percent remote collaboration between electronic musician and composer Owain Kelly (NO CEREMONY///) in Manchester and artist and editor Tod Lippy in Brooklyn — releases its datacenter-core new single, "the rumo(u)r." The track drops tomorrow, Tuesday May 12, during AI Week NYC (May 11–17), as thousands of AI professionals gather in New York to discuss tech’s ravenous future.
Flipping the script on an industry built on unlicensed access to artists' work, “the rumo(u)r” samples the soundscape of AI’s physical infrastructure. It leads with a heart-pounding digital pulse overlaid by static and joined by the auto-tuned 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 most local noise ordinances.
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 follows GULFF's debut single "error" (February 20). Both songs are drawn from the band’s forthcoming, eponymous, 39-minute LP, which is built on found audio soundtracking late capitalism: robocall voicemails, QVC shopping channel footage, a Meta AI cooking demo layered atop a men's rights podcast, crowd noise from a Trump golf tournament, and the 2600Hz tone once used in phone phreaking - all captured through a process they call “digital field recording”.
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The source material is “the auditory byproduct of the time we’re living in,” said Kelly, “including the noise we’re forced to hear and at the same time not supposed to notice.”
Made over email, WhatsApp voice notes, and file-sharing platforms, he says the forthcoming album is wholly dependent on digital technology while the duo draws a line at tools that replace human decisions in the creative process, including, for example, generative tools and algorithmic mastering.
The band's name comes from the 2025 federal renaming of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America — a bureaucratic act that hit a chord for Kelly and Lippy as they collaborated from opposite sides of the Atlantic.
"the rumo(u)r" is available on all platforms. An upcoming music video for the track created by Lippy layers data center maps, thermal imaging of their methane emissions, sound waves, AI-generated ads, and phone footage of an out-of-control dancing robot into a music visualizer from AI hell. The self-titled LP is out September 25.
Press inquiries Fifer Burman • [email protected]
Website gulffonline.com • Bandcamp • YouTube • Streaming Platforms
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.