Kraken Ascendant

Songs for the AI Apocalypse 

Kraken Ascendant uses dark humor to explore the promise and perils of the AI age. The album opens with country singer Buck Gunn on Beware the Jabberwock, adding a twist to Lewis Carroll’s poem where the monster’s severed head grows new legs while we sleep. Seafarer Phineas Krunk belts out Strike the Bell, a sea shanty urging the tech bros to slow down, introducing the album's first symbolic angel: a reckless AI investor focused on "counting the plunder." Shifting to historical protest, Data Center Blues introduces the second, better angel, Lyra, who sings an 18th-century folk poem critiquing the privatization of public resources. The narrative darkens as Buck channels an obsessed conspiracy theorist in The Plainspoken Man, paired with Phineas’s doomscrolling lament, Phantom of Me Former Self. In Oh Father Dear, Lyra plays the daughter of an artist driven from his profession by cheap AI art, then sings an eerie version of Hush A Bye expressing fears of a disturbing future for our children. The warnings peak as Phineas decries the loss of digital privacy in Scrape Her and Scrub Her, and Buck exposes the loss of human purpose in The Magic Ship. Finally, the trio unite for the acerbic blues closer, You Talk Real Sweet, contrasting AI’s promises with its pitfalls and imploring leaders to follow their better angels.

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