Aural Aggravation

Christopher Nosnibor

13th September 2025

It is impossible to escape AI now, and its ubiquity has arrived at a shocking pace, its acceleration seemingly exponential. You can avoid social media, but can you avoid computers or mobile phones for even more than a few hours? The news – beyond the main headlines, at least – is abrim with reports on how it’s affecting us as individuals, as a species, and the environmental impact. I watch a training video at work: it’s presented by AI actors who move their arms in strange ways and occasionally mispronounce a word in the worst way. Meanwhile, management want us to save time on report-writing by using Copilot. Drained by all of this, I go to the pub for soe decompression time, and the talk is of how jobs are being undermined by AI, and some guy’s got a video AI made using just a photograph. Why? Why do we need this? We don’t, of course, but it’s novel, mindless entertainment that can be created in seconds. Increasingly, it feels like we’re volunteering ourselves for virtual lobotomies. Despite the fact that the current technoscape is every sci-fi dystopia playing out exactly as told in real-time, it seems the majority of people are more than happy to embrace AI. Even writers, artists, and the like, present themselves as ‘curious’ and will engage with AI for prompts or to brush up something they’ve done. But the fact it that it’s a slippery slope, which gets steeper and steeper and further down is an abyss that plunges straight to hell. The worst of it is that it’d becoming increasingly difficult to separate real life.

One of the issues I have personally is that just as every significant technological advancement since the Industrial Revolution brought the promise of more leisure time by making work lighter, the opposite is true – unless you consider unemployment and life on the breadline to be leisure. AI isn’t saving time by vacuum cleaning the house, hanging up the laundry, putting the bins out or doing the school run: it’s simply devaluing creative skills. Anyone who has read an AI-generated article, heard an AI-assisted song, or seen some AI-created art will know that there’s something ‘off’ about it, that it’s soulless and vaguely alien. Meanwhile, the world seems to be spiralling into a cesspit of animosity, hatred, and division. Something happened during the pandemic which meant that when we all emerged from lockdown, war and rage and unspeakable cuntiness exploded on a scale beyond articulation. It’s no wonder people are struggling with life right now.

Now After Nothing is, in some respects, a therapeutic escape from all the shit. Multi-instrumentalist Matt Spatial paired with Michael Allen after what he describes as ‘a relatively difficult time in my life [where] I had become lost and depressed without a creative outlet with which to express myself’. There’s much to say that creativity – and exercise, both physical and mental – are the best self-maintenance. Listening to this EP, it’s clear that Spatial is really pouting everything into this.

His comments on the EP are worth quoting: “Artificial Ambivalence, as a concept, to me represents the state of feeling lost and/or the ‘shutting down’ from the negativity and toxicity around each of us,” Spatial explains. “They say ‘ignorance is bliss’, but in the (mis-)information age we seem to have reached a point of being pummeled into exhaustion from the constant barrage of negativity. For some, while the desire is stronger than ever to make positive change in the world, we might get derailed by feelings of helplessness, hopelessness, and being powerless in a society that seems to increasingly favor only one set of values. For others, it’s the choice to conveniently ignore the inhumane atrocities happening in our society when those atrocities don’t directly impact that individual.”

Of the music, there are references to ‘goth-glam grooves slick with sweat, raw enough to leave a mark’ and a nod to the fact that ‘fans have called it “S&M disco,” a sinister shimmer of punk, industrial grind, and nocturnal new wave.’

The first thing that strikes on the first listen of this EP is the energy. Everything is up-front and it lands like a proper punch in the face. Big, gutsy riffs underpin some sinewy lead guitar parts, driven by some explosive percussion and sturdy, throbbing bass. Straight out the traps, ‘Sick Fix’ blends post-punk and grunge to create a hard-hitting blast, and one that’s got hooks and melody in spades, too, with hints of Big Black in the background. It sets the bar high, but ‘Criminal Feature’ hurdles it effortlessly.

Slowing the pace and changing not only the tempo but the mood, the piano-led ‘Holly’ broods hard and is unashamedly mid-80d goth in its vibe, but also incorporates more post-millennial post-punk and goth in its genetics. The result is – to wheel out a cliché – anthemic. And it is, of course, the perfect mid-set slowie, which sets things up for the chugging, bass-driven beast that is ‘Fixation Fantasy’, a track that’s more 90s alt-rock than post punk or goth. More than anything, I’m reminded of psychedelic grunge also-rans Eight Storey Window in the ear for melody and the emotional heft delivered by some achesome riffs delivered at an intense volume.

‘Dare’ brings some dark pop intimations paired with some searing guitar work which lands like a post-rock Placebo crossed with Salvation – that is to say, it’s richly immersed in that mid-80s Leeds sound. It’s inspired stuff, and then some. Closing off, single release ‘Entangled’ offers glorious shoegaze gentility before breaking into a magnificent slice of synthy post-punk with some massive guitar. Artificial Ambivalence is better than ‘all killer’ (which it is) – it’s next-level solid quality and absolute gold.

AA