The Wytches announce fourth album, Talking Machine

Vocalist/guitarist Kristian Bell says of "Black Ice": "Last year I started working a few shifts at a record shop. There’s so much 60’s music in there to play while I work. A lot of trashy 60’s revival bands from the 80’s too, like The Milkshakes and The Cannibals. I remember putting on a 7” of “Till The End Of The Day” by The Kinks. It sounded so heavy to me. Heavier than modern metal. I wanted to go down that route. Where the sound can blow your head off without using the usual sonic tricks we’ve used before. Black ice was the first experiment with that."

With AI being a hot topic, the name of the album is taken from a book about Thomas Edison whose nickname for gramophones was Talking Machine. He would host events called Tone Tests demonstrating how much audio recordings had advanced by fooling the audience in to thinking they were listening to musicians playing live but it was actually all pre-recorded, playing from a gramophone. People feared that a lot of jobs in the entertainment industry and beyond would be replaced by technology, a lot like what’s going on now.

Talking Machine follow's the 2020 release, Three Mile Ditch – the group's first album in four years – following on from 2016's All Your Happy Life.

Tracklist:

1. Talking Machine
2. Black Ice
3. Coffin Nails
4. Perform
5. Factory
6. Romance
7. Is The World Too Old?
8. Nothing To See
9. When The Obsession Began
10. Don't Make It For Me
11. Romance End