7th August 2026
Christopher Nosnibor
What do Depeche Mode, Pink Floyd and Roger Waters, and The Cure have in common? No? A bit stumped? Well they’re all listed as touchstones for the new solo EP from Greg Bullock, who’s perhaps better known as co-founder and one half of Cyborg Amok, purveyors of goth-infused synth-rock – although he his solo career has always coexisted alongside. The band’s name seems particularly salient in context of the recent news of AI’s exponential self-advancements: what was essentially science fiction just a couple of years ago is now the reality of the world in which we live. And it’s the reality of the world in which 26EP is firmly routed, exploring, as he puts it ‘ideas we may not always find comfort in: persecution, contamination, ignorance, and mortality’.
It’s true: few find comfort in any of those topics, and while the romanticism of death is a fairly popular and eternal trope in art through the centuries, few find much by way of warmth when confronted with issues of mortality in immediate proximity. In fact, it’s strange how even the most philosophical – or nihilistic, or tough-seeming – individuals who are brazen about death wilt at the loss of friend and relatives and are suddenly moved to proclaim that someone in their sixties or seventies was ‘of no age’ and ‘taken too young’. In short, death in the abstract is fine, but the actuality is something we can’t even bear to contemplate. Meanwhile, persecution, contamination, and ignorance provide the daily fuel for fiery exchanges on social media and inflammatory reports in the news media. It seems that in recent years, we’ve come to thrive on these very things which tear us apart, as individuals, and as a society. I suppose it comes down to the separation of the keyboard to the life experience, the chasm which yawns between concept and corporality.
‘In Other Words’ starts with a bassline reminiscent of The Cure circa Faith, before plunging into a dark gothy post-punk space, somewhere underground and airless. ‘The deeper the trench / The higher the climb’, he croons in a reverb-soaked baritone, dry, crunched, but ringing clear. It’s a lyric based in logic rather than one which provides a revelatory insight, and yet… and yet, we seem to have become so mired in distractions and misinformation and futile infighting, that simple, basic truths have been cast by the wayside, and in this context, this plain observation carries unexpected weight, particularly as we continue to dig ourselves ever deeper, not only increasingly entrenched in polarised views, but also in embracing AI and practices which accelerate climate change. We’re digging our own graves, here. The trench is approaching the depth of very depths of the oceans. And still we dig.
The folksy ‘Thirty Pieces’ is sparse and dark, despite some lilting instrumentation. Bullock’s rasping vocal lands between Leonard Cohen and recent releases by James Ray, while ‘I Ain’t Goin!’ presents a hybrid of early post-punk and electropop, with a primitive production aesthetic reminiscent of the era, a basic drum machine with a whip-crack snare dominating the mix.
The riff on ‘Blu-Green Beauty’ leans on ‘You Really Got me’ by The Kinks, but filtered through Dr Mix and the Remix as Bullock rails against climate change and paints a bleak yet somehow encouraging picture in which there is still choice: ‘You can close the curtains / You can close your eyes / You can kill everything / You can kill, blu-green beauty.’ Do we still have a choice? If so, for how long?
26EP is pretty bleak, but still contains glimmers of optimism. Where I’m sitting, the future is dark, so I hope he’s right.
AA
