Songwriter. Composer. Cripplepunk AF.

Author: Kris Halpin

  • Some Of You Have Giant Teddy Bears.

    Some Of You Have Giant Teddy Bears.

    The carny allocated a giant teddy bear to that poor sucker the way that platforms allocate surpluses to key performers—as a convincer in a “Big Store” con, a way to rope in other suckers who’ll make content for the platform, anchoring themselves and their audiences to it.

    If you are a creative person on social media – especially if you are one of my fellow musicians hoping to “crack” the algo – I really think you should read this blog post by Cory Doctorow on the Enshittification of platforms.

    I know so many artists who live in agonising hope of social media success. There are no gatekeepers any more! Anyone can succeed! You just have to crack the codes of the algorithm. Find its rhythms. Please it, and all will be yours.

    There’s no code. There’s nothing to solve. This is just another gatekeeper.

    It doesn’t deserve the emotional tax you pay it.

    Advertisers are the customers. Attention is the product. You know this already. But we have to stop indulging this cruel game that we can succeed – make it! – on social media if we can just figure out the algorithm. There’s no patterns. No strategy. Some people have to win, or the whole thing falls flat.

    There’s a woman in my local community who wears a hat on TikTok. That’s the concept. She has more followers than I’ll ever have. I’m not having a go. Good for her. It clearly brings joy. But this can’t be mistaken for a strategy. She isn’t better at this than you or I. She was allowed to win the big bear, so we can see her walking round the fair with the big bear.

    That’s why we think we can win a bear too.

    Someone needs to win the bear.

    Focuses on TikTok, but the rules apply across the board. The claw machine has worked for some people. It has to. It has promised you fame and fortune. It has to pay out sometimes.

    TikTok has tried to give me a giant teddy bear. I was very excited to get it. 25k views on one pretty random video. If I keep playing, I’ll get to keep the bear.

    We deserve better than this.

    LINKY LINK TO THE ARTICLE ON WIRED.

    I used Jeepy-T to create the featured image on a blogpost about the enshittification of the internet. Oh, funnysad irony.

    xKH

  • Doctor’s Orders: Re-Released for 2025

    Doctor’s Orders: Re-Released for 2025

    Here’s another curiosity from the archives. I was still getting to grips with my new studio, and figuring out how to make software sounds sound lesss softwarey, for want of a better word

    It’s just a little piano work, a foreshadowing of my return to more serious instrumental composition. It has a spooky charm, as do most things of this time. I think I imagined it like an opening suite, probably taking cues from Tubular Bells, as I often do.

    Streaming wherever you get your music x

  • Ghostships – Rereleased for 2025

    Ghostships – Rereleased for 2025

    I’ve been making for so long, that a whole bunch of my career happened pre-streaming. When I recorded my first solo single, there were just a few places you could share music online – remember Overplay, anyone? Most of this music got lost as I moved into the modern chapter of my career, with the gloves and all the adventures that brings.

    That inevitably means that a lot of people who know my music now, don’t know where it began. I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately, but thankfully my original Mac, collecting dust in my studio, still works and contains a huge archive of songs and recordings.

    There’s definitely a right time to revisit old work. You can’t force it. I went through a long period of being quite dismissive of my past, only looking forward. I’ve been through a lot personally over the last year, and it’s been a time of taking stock and reflecting. In that, it now feels like a good time to introduce – re-introduce – a younger version of myself to my modern audience.

    Ghostships was my first single as a solo artist. It’s a dark downward spiral meditation on the bleakest ends to relationships. The death of a relationship. a Ghostship.

    It’s from another life, with a meaning that is long gone to me, but songs take on new meanings. This song – I’m told – still means a lot to a few people who remember it. It deserves a new life, a new audience to find their own meanings in it.

    It’s a very lo-fi recording, but it has a charm. I’ve got the stems, I may remix it, but for now, this is the original release, made little louder and tighter for streaming.

    There’s lots more on the way, I hope you enjoy this little curiosity from my past life x

    Streaming now, wherever you get your music.