Northern Rivers band Shed have announced the release of their single A Series of Tubes, the first new music from the band since the 2018 LP Terrestrial Stress.
In the intervening years, the band has relocated from Brisbane to northern NSW and reduced from three members to two: Gene Mason – guitar, vocals, laptop – and Kellie Murphy on violin.
While the band’s members have been stripped back, the opposite has happened to the music. The new track presents a wider sound palette for the band, with the core components of guitar, violin, vocals and drums being augmented by additional digital instrumentation.
Surveillance, paranoia and social isolation
The sound reflects the track’s subject matter which explores contemporary concepts of surveillance, paranoia and social isolation.
The track’s title references a widely-ridiculed analogy put forward by an American senator in 2006 to describe the internet. While overly simplistic, the analogy is actually a relatively accurate description of the physical infrastructure that creates the online world.
With the gap between the digital and physical world now practically nonexistent, the discourse still lacks a meaningful conceptualisation of what the internet really is and whose interests it serves.
New Age mysticism and baseless subjectivity
It’s no wonder some have turned to New Age mysticism and baseless subjectivity to understand their modern existence.
For the accompanying video, director Joseph Burgess developed these themes into an unearthly vision of digital paranoia. Burgess utilised both traditional photography and 3D computer graphic animation to create the odd visual aesthetic, which at times seems to result from the viewer’s computer or phone overheating and struggling to process the images.
Over the video’s six minutes, the protagonist is pursued by cameras, drones, and giant armoured mammals. Despite his desperate efforts, there is no escape.
The video ends with a blood-red depiction of computer-generated horror.
You can find out more on the Bandcamp page.
