ABOVE: Contents and packaging of the first vinyl pressing of *GULFF* (ed. of 50)
Tod Lippy and Owain Kelly — artists who have never been in the same room and say they intend to keep it that way — mark the release of GULFF with a free listening party at Brooklyn's Public Records on September 24, where the first vinyl pressing (ed. of 50) of the LP, containing a limited-edition artwork and dozens of other physical and digital process-related artifacts, will be available.
September 10, 2026 — GULFF is Owain Kelly and Tod Lippy. Lippy is in Brooklyn. Kelly is in Manchester, UK. They have never been in the same room, and they intend to keep it that way.
Out on September 25, the duo’s eponymous debut album is their reckoning with what has recently been labeled as “crunch time for humanity" as AI, unbridled capitalism, and political corruption (which they see as often working in an unholy trinity) threaten human existence. The album’s 10 tracks, mixed by Kelly and mastered by Katie Tavini, dig deep into these themes while featuring the auditory byproducts of our current era — robocalls, rolling newscasts, social media reels, studio audience soundscapes, data center noise — which Kelly and Lippy collect through a process they have dubbed “digital field recording.”
The album opens with “the rumo(u)r,” a track whose disturbing mantra—”the rumor is we are all getting one hole”—is delivered via Lippy’s eerily distorted vocals over a sea of data center noise and news clips relating the horror stories of residents living next to these facilities. The song, written nearly two years ago, has never felt more relevant. Just scanning the titles of other tracks on the album—such as “redline,” “too late,” “error,” and “the anomie”—gives a sense of the concerns felt by Kelly and Lippy, who started their entirely remote collaboration in the spring of 2025.
“We both immediately bonded over our shared anxieties about the state of the world,” Lippy says, “and when I started working on rough demos, nearly all of them—either directly or indirectly—addressed what even then felt like an existential crisis unfolding before our eyes.” As he and Kelly embarked on the year-long process of crafting the final 10 tracks through hundreds of back-and-forths via WhatsApp and file-sharing apps, they also honed their shared vision of what GULFF could, and should, be.
"Tod and I knew our collaboration would be sociopolitically, culturally and technologically charged,” Kelly relates, “but we wanted to do it from a place of open-mindedness and deep consideration. We don't want to be condescendingly critical of our times; we want to create work that provokes a response, and, ideally, engagement.”
To that end, the release of “the rumo(u)r” single in May was accompanied by “Data Center Listening Station,” an installation at New York’s legendary art bookstore Printed Matter during AI Week NY. For this piece, the duo constructed a facsimile of a suburban home office with a window overlooking a neighboring data center. On a desk under the window, a computer offered visitors a selection of publicly sourced videos and audio of data center noise captured by residents and posted online. The installation, which also included clippings from relevant news articles about the dangers posed by data centers, as well as a journal in which participants could write down their own concerns, was visited by hundreds of people over the course of its four-day run.
ABOVE: GULFF’s “Data Center Listening Station” at Printed Matter, NY (May 14-17, 2026)
GULFF will continue to work across a range of disciplines in conjunction with their musical collaborations, but for the moment, they are focused on the release of their debut, which is already earning praise from early listeners.
“These days, I find myself drawn either to minimal arrangement or the completely blown out, and this album alternates between those two in a way that works beautifully,” said The Antlers frontman Peter Silberman. “Beyond the experimental textures and production, it has a lot of heart and power. It feels authentic and cathartic.”
GULFF, which will be available on all streaming platforms, **is also being released as a signed-and-numbered limited vinyl edition of 50, in the spirit of the now-retired Esopus (Lippy’s acclaimed ad-free arts magazine).
Each copy of the first vinyl edition contains: