Written and mostly recorded in about six weeks, give or take, Anecdata‘s newest album Obsolete is a noisy slab of home-recorded powerpop, alt rock and ’80s indie/new wave.

“It’s a record about being human at a time when that feels, well, obsolete.”

It has one foot in the past, stomping on a fuzz pedal, and the other in the future, tackling subjects like being human in a world where AI is taking over not drudgery (as we were promised!) – but edging in on creativity.

The title track was the first written for the album and sets the template. ‘Obsolete‘ picks up where Cheap Trick left off in 1979, mixing punk guitar and Beatles melodies with retro synths. It discusses a future (or present?) in which we’re “dead and gone”, just “bones and meat” and obsolete like “jobs and ashtrays”.

‘Fake Job‘ tackles what it means to be earning a living doing something you know a machine is going to be able to do better than you sometime in the next few years, if not months or even days.

The lead ‘single’ (if they’re still called that) is ‘Wake Up Feeling Shit‘, which looks at perhaps one of the few hindrances people have that computers won’t ever.

‘Merging Universes‘ mixes Smashing Pumpkins ‘wall of sound’ guitars and Kraftwerk vocoders; ‘Failure‘ imagines a world in which home-recording indie pop artists – bizarrely! – aren’t as popular as Taylor Swift and Lorde; and Xennial anthem ‘The World Can Go to Hell‘, much like the economy, can’t make up its mind which way it’s going, or at what speed.

The entire album was written in late January/February 2024, and recording finished in March. It was mixed and mastered in April in the same West Auckland bedroom studio where it was recorded.

Anecdata is not a band per se, but one guy Dan – who writes, records, programs and mixes everything you hear. Aside from using some pretty awesome software, there’s zero outside help whatsoever. Every note is composed and played/programmed by Dan himself!

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