Long-time tQ favourite William Doyle has shared his first new music since 2021’s Great Spans Of Muddy Time LP, a track called ‘Surrender Yourself’.
Out through Tough Love, the new cut features Doyle alongside Genevieve Dawson and Alexander Painter on sax, while Brian Eno also contributes "a layer of chaotic polyrhythm." The track, which you can listen to above, is an oblique look at the impact of AI on our human sense of self.
In a statement about the new song, Doyle said: "At first, [it] may seem like a call to liberation – to surrender yourself to the present moment, to the unpredictability of life, to loosen your grip on the reins of your existence and enter a flow state. But read it again and the threat and menace of the phrase becomes apparent – you are surrounded. We have you exactly where we want you. There’s no way out. Surrender Yourself!
"The voice in this song is trying to convince you that it’s an ambassador of the former reading, but listen again and you’ll hear that it’s really the spokesperson of the latter. Some of the lyrics are adapted from a genuinely funny and quite revealing experimental interview with an AI chatbot trained on the words of Mark Zuckerberg published by The Guardian. The short-lived dream of the Metaverse was an inspiration for this song. Let’s stop surrendering ourselves to mediocre billionaires!"
‘Surrender Yourself’ comes in advance of a new album from Doyle in 2024, while he will also play live shows later in October at Cardiff’s Sŵn Festival (22), Southampton’s Heartbreakers (24), The Smokehouse in Ipswich (25) and Ramsgate Music Hall (26).
‘Surrender Yourself’ is out now on Tough Love.
