‘You were designed by an idiot, a self-styled creatif, you’re a Friday five o’clock toss off, before another wasted wet weekend’ (The Arcade Claw King)

We are currently amid the shifting sands of a fourth industrial revolution driven by emerging digital technologies that we’re promised / threatened will be even more transformative than those that have gone before.  Whether that proves to be the case remains conjecture, but what we can guarantee is the likely outcome will be lower wages, poorer jobs, and even more outsized profits.  Not exactly enticing is it?

AAA Gripper’s debut album, We Invented Work The Common Good, expressly sets out to explore our relationship with work in its contemporary setting – how we are first compelled onto the production line and how, despite whatever intentions we might have, escape frequently proves elusive.  Tautly resonant bass lines and crisply precise drums provide the band’s cornerstone, while shards of angular guitar flare abrasively, with each element fizzingly audible.

Meanwhile, the drawled spoken word vocals lock-in with a rhythmic synchronicity as they unfurl a sardonically surreal series of vignettes, spanning everything from the horrors of team awaydays to the work ethos of wasps.  The overarching sense is one of staccato agitation, the essentially monochrome palette fuelling the album’s singular sense of clarity as it sweeps from the fevered Lower Demons to the more limber expansiveness of Angel Washes.  The result is a blend that mirrors our own experiences – wide-eyed naivety, knowing complicity, burning cynicism all leading to the realisation that we are shackled to an economic system that is plundering both us and our communities for its own gain.