SEEMING

posthuman • postgothic • post-everything

[seemingmusic]

Nevermind that I have 950 posts up at my patreon—I'm playing a livestream concert there in less than a day!

www.patreon.com/salexanderreed

[proto-actual]

I had @seemingmusic on loop at work today, so here's a sticker idea I won't make but have been thinking about all day

(now that I've taken the requisite ten minutes to get it out into the world (lol) I can finally go the hell to bed)

(Edit, after sleeping on it: I like this a lot. Still not making a sticker but I AM gonna play with it. Tonight I'm gonna fix the kerning, add a QR code to the record, and maybe make a vertical version)

[seemingmusic]

After five years' silence, Seeming is releasing a new album today, simply called The World. Lit up with violins, trumpets, and cellos, it's a striking LP of heavy darkwave, equal parts disillusionment and hope, defiance and hunger.

Our previous collections have made best-of lists at Bandcamp and Synthpop Fanatic, and were awarded Album of the Year by IDieYouDie and A Model of Control. We think this new LP is a worthy followup.

Get the download (or a CD & t-shirt):

You can stream it too on your favorite sites.

The album is released on Artoffact Records, with cover art by the remarkable Serbian painter Dragan Bibin. (And today is Bandcamp Friday, when 100% of goes directly to the artists. If you’ve been meaning to support Seeming's work—including the previous albums—now's the day to do it.)

We've already released a few singles: A Failure of Imagination, Grindshow, Zebra Tramples Horse Trainer, Assassin's Lovesong. Our personal favorites on the album are album tracks: Heart of Hunger, Shackleton, and Winterlight. Check them out—they remind us of Madness & Extinction and maybe even ThouShaltNot’s The White Beyond. (Yes, Aaron is still playing drums on this record too.)

And hey, if you’ve made it this far, thank you. However you found our music, we’re so grateful for your support. It means more than you know. (If you want even more of a connection, sign up for Alex’s Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/salexanderreed, where you’ll find 800 posts, including a ton of unreleased songs, fiction, poetry, mixtapes, journalism, and outtake scholarship from his books on industrial music and Laurie Anderson.)

The world is wild, and it’s time for us to get loud together.

A tour will happen in the first half of 2026. Catch you soon,

[seemingmusic]

"Grindshow" is the lead single from Seeming's first album in five years. Sung from the hurricane's eye, the song finds wily strength in flexibility: "When the veil is thin, you can jump right in." Shapeshifting atop slinky rhumba drums, singer Alex Reed whispers and belts, conjuring Grace Jones, Blixa Bargeld, and Depeche Mode. "Grindshow" plays a queer soundtrack for dancing, kissing, or industrial sabotage. Surrender to this new turn from one of dark music's best-kept secrets.

HERE IS THE SPOTIFY LINK. I don't love Spotify but if you've got an account, the most useful thing you do for us is to steer the Almighty Algorithm our way. Run up those first-day numbers!

• HERE'S THE BANDCAMP LINK; it's just a one-track single for now, but if you'd like the file to own and to cherish and to name George, then by all means, you're welcome to buy it there

[some-teeth-in-a-trench-coat]

3 things:

What's a song, band, album, or playlist you want to shout out?

What are your opinions on pets (dog, cat, neither, other)?

Finally, what's a boring fact about you?

Cheers, have a good one.

Oh yes!

Shoutout a band? SEEMING, SEEMING, SEEMING BABY! They're even on tumblr: @seemingmusic

Their music is great and the lyrics are freaking phenomenal poems and I have no idea why they're not among tumblr's favorites like? "The future will be borderless, and red and queer and bold, for I was born to make my kind extinct" (End Studies) "Dreamt of gutting billionaires... But when I woke, blood was gone" (Go Small) you've got the eat the rich be queer do crime philosophy all over it! "Like a tall tree, I am pining to be taken up by the lightning! Strike me! I dare you! I dare you! Heaven, hear me! Like a mantis, I am praying, out of habit, without saying anything, for the bloody sting of a kestrel come to snatch me" (Remember to Breathe) it's got puns it's got self destructive thoughts it's got vague religious implications which I'm not a fan of personally but you guys seem to love it when it's Hozier. And who can ignore "To the gunmen who guard against all of the starving: God will bury you, nature will bury you [...] To the terrified rich man: God will bury you. To the killers of animals: nature will bury you." (The Burial) like don't tell me that doesn't go hard. (Personally I like to think of The Burial as not a threat but a loving promise. It continues "To the worshipper of justice, the reliance on reason, and the fire in your eyes: God will bury you, nature will bury you, time will bury your bones unseen. Total and absolute. Infinite amplitude. Till all the black is ripe and green." and because honoring the dead and burying them is an important act of kindness, I like to think of this as a promise that no matter who you are, no matter who you leave behind to mourn you, you will be buried. You will die and you will return to the Earth and you will be lovingly welcomed, it is inevitable and inescapable, I promise. I know I already rambled about this when I reblogged that worm poem post but I will keep talking about it because I love it and I don't know how many people actually read it.) There's so much more I want to say but I'm on mobile in bed hours past bedtime and this paragraph is probably already way too long and disorganized so like maybe tomorrow but! Regardless of whether you can listen to the music I highly recommend reading some of the lyrics here: https://seemingmusic.tumblr.com/text

Anyway moving on from minor infodump, I'm not entirely sure what you mean by your second question like are you asking my opinion on pets as a concept or my preferences for having pets or? I think humans love to pack bond with things that are not humans and as long as the human is able to meet the needs of an animal to create a mutually beneficial relationship that's a good thing, but ideally you should opt for domesticated animals (animals that have been our companions for so long they are genetically distinct from their wild counterparts) since they are best adapted to living with humans. I was practically raised by cats living with my workaholic single mom and our cats so personally I love cats and probably have a better time connecting with them than I would other common pets like dogs. Currently mom and I are sharing two cats, brothers, but one rarely visits me while the other is obsessed with me but I suspect this is because a) I always have his favorite snack available (potato chips. yeah I don't think he knows he's a cat) and b) I pet him the way he likes best (which is a lot of rubbing and scratching his spine by the tail intermittent with chin scritches, but he wants you to be firm with it as though he were a dog... again this man is not aware he's a cat).

A boring fact about me... Well easy mode is just "I have two feet" or "I ate a sandwich for breakfast today" but let me try to think of something a bit more personal yet still uninteresting... I have watched less than one episode of Supernatural. Yeah that's boring yet specific.

Thank you so much for the ask sorry my reply is a little messy I was already in bed when I got this!

[seemingmusic]

WHERE WERE YOU (parts 1 & 2)

New single tomorrow morning on Bandcamp. It's about the way now becomes then, the people we lose in the process, and the compromises made.

Election day is coming up. Please vote.

______________________________

WHERE WERE YOU (parts 1 & 2)

[part 1]

Where were you in ’22? The end of the honeymoon The mask is off and the creature is coming through Out of the void that cuts between the eye and the screen

What does she see, young futurist, 1913 Crystal ball, looking down on me— Who damns them all among the fallen— She who fell in with the yelling shiny metal boys? Yes they knew there’s an art to noise That now’s where the time ahead destroys the ashen past But they left their caskets wide Half of them turned fascists while the other half died

Why’s it that a ticket out Is always a Faustian deal with the devil? The field’s not level; whatever— Give me the lever, just give me the lever Just give me a lever and a place to stand I can move the world, I can move the world Give me a lever and a place to stand And I'll move the world, and I'll move the world

But where am I? And why’s this mirror here? Why does it shine with the disappeared? World War One and all to come The spiral swallows up a hundred years Is it wrong that I long for correction? Some invective retrospective court To flex a hand around the necks of Bush, Thatcher, Musk Bastards all who stacked the decks

So who is next? Not Benedetta Cappa, or the table-rapping Foxes yet Tried to escape from their boxes Without a say in their age or their sex Besides, who can test whether the perception I got is correct? Whether I’m inventing a special effect? Am I a lone tall tree in the woods unwrecked unchecked from dusk to sunset?

Where were you in ’22? The death of solitude The end of your tolerance for the call of a prophet Who fed you dreams or the fear of a bloody coup But how did you get here? What did they do to you? And when is now? I mean really, what in hell is now? A junkie who, caught between the memory of flight and terror of the night Begs: what can my money do?

That’s what I get for having two eyes to read with, see with Maybe size up the summer roughness From above this burning forest, California’s poorest, smoke on all horizons Who let all the flies into this version of my life? Am I dying? Where were you in ’22? Go get your alibi, son Make it a good lie

Where were you in ’22? Where were you in ’22? Got one more window to look through Where were you?

[part 2]

The Angel of History turns an eye to the graveyard Growing and churning without a border or safeguard But blown back by the force of the past, The tyrannical gnashing of teeth and the panicking death screech, The Angel of history is paralyzed by a shock to the spine called progress Trinity bomb test, 1945 Everybody ever alive, when you rise, I’ll fall and apologize

I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry I dreamed of Kemdi Amadiume, where I could see the future And I’m sorry was I all I could tell her Creation is sorry; you deserved better I’m so sorry, sorry The words echo wide to the first ever suicide in the Kalahari And everything tumbling after Hell of a way to conclude the first chapter

So where were you in 22? Who am I talking to? The slaughterhouse animals in the cages all going blue Illegal to film but they’re killed for you to chew And the angel is crying at the Bronx Zoo Are you talking to the meteor in space You’re hoping will break through, come and erase Cut the Gordian knot, plot dissolves, columns fall All our problems going small?

Or are you talking to your parents whom you even still make excuses for 'cause you’re in the will? Executor, testatrix, execution in the matrix Am I talking to entitled generational wealth? The feedback loop spins a Fabergé shell Gilded with rubies and amber gels Waiting to be smashed, cast a spell

Hell, I guess what I mean is take yourself back to fourteen The first and only evening you could see with clarity right and wrong And share with me: do you owe that kid a song? Or were you killed by the age-fifteen version And the guilt that made age sixteen worse And seventeen, eighteen like dominoes And when they come, can you tell where the kid goes?

Are you swallowing the previous minute down? Does this verse chew the last and spit it out? Animal to animal, cannibal to cannibal Man ate the neanderthal What claim do you have at all? Don’t blame the black hole’s gravity well Don’t blame the crocodile eating itself But where you in '22 when the curtain finally finally finally fell?

[seemingmusic]

1897, Olive Eleanor Custance, a.k.a. Lady Alfred Douglas

[seemingmusic]

unburied

Happily, we have regained access to this little Tumblr account. We might not use it very often, but it still was a bummer to have it hacked into the void for the last month. Time to start posting and scrolling like it's 2011.

<3

Alex

[seemingmusic]

[seemingmusic]

The Birdwatcher’s Guide to Atrocity

FINALLY, FINALLY IT’S HERE: YOUR EXCUSE TO GO PERMANENTLY MAD.

SEEMING’S THIRD ALBUM IS RELEASED.  

BUY IT HERE.

STREAM IT HERE.

Menacing but vulnerable. Furious but intimate. Co-produced with renowned avant-garde percussionist Sarah Hennies, The Birdwatcher's Guide to Atrocity shines eerie light through the cracks of life under capitalism. In effortless accents of chamber pop, postpunk, and clattering synthpop, the album radiates political revolt, personal remembrance, and disarming compassion. Never before has Seeming's post-anthropocene futurity been more appropriate.  

Seeming is the project of Alex Reed, with Aaron Fuleki. They had previously been in the band ThouShaltNot. Alex is the author of a 33 1/3 book as well as Assimilate: A Critical History of Industrial Music.  The band has recorded with Merzbow, Sammus, Bill Drummond, Alphaville, and many others.

Seeming’s previous LPs are Madness & Extinction and SOL: A Self-Banishment Ritual.

[seemingmusic]

GO SMALL

I recorded the vocals for “Go Small” outdoors in the Pyrenees mountains one morning last summer. The birds you hear are real. It’s a song about clinging to a vital sliver of sanity by focusing only on what was right in front of me: a room, a garden, my own hands. The drums feature Sarah Hennies and Aaron Fuleki. Its video was filmed in lockdown, at a shack in the woods of Ithaca, NY. When the world is run by cruel and greedy men, it’s hard to “go small,” but that intimacy and focus really saved me. This is a song for recentering—all without forgetting your rage. It feels like life under quarantine. It feels like 2020.

[seemingmusic]

End Studies

End Studies, a song by Seeming on Spotify

I WAS TAUGHT THE LANGUAGE OF THE OLD GODS

[seemingmusic]

The Birdwatcher's Guide to Atrocity, by Seeming

10 track album

THE BIRDWATCHER'S GUIDE TO ATROCITY a 2020 album by Seeming with ten ways to survive until tomorrow 

Now up for pre-order, with the new single “Go Small.” Menacing but vulnerable. Furious but intimate. Co-produced with renowned avant-garde percussionist Sarah Hennies, The Birdwatcher's Guide to Atrocity shines eerie light through the cracks of life under capitalism. In effortless accents of chamber pop, postpunk, and clattering synthpop, the album radiates political revolt, personal remembrance, and disarming compassion. Never before has Seeming's post-anthropocene futurity been more appropriate. For fans of Low, Depeche Mode, Chelsea Wolfe, Hurts, Einstürzende Neubauten, Twin Shadow, Emma Ruth Rundle, IAMX, Leonard Cohen, ANOHNI, HEALTH. 

[seemingmusic]

<<<I WAS BORN TO MAKE MY KIND EXTINCT>>>

[seemingmusic]

LIVE WEBCAST ACOUSTIC CONCERT TONIGHT

8pm eastern time, exclusively for Patreon members, tier-2 and up!

http://patreon.com/salexanderreed

[seemingmusic]

Your music has gotten me through the last two weeks. Thanks for making the world a little less awful.

Thank YOU for listening. Reading this gives me a little hope too. <3

[seemingmusic]

For my birthday, a new album & a Patreon launch!

When I was making Seeming's SOL LP, I revisited and recorded a set of unnnabashedly goth songs I'd written as a teenager—they're loose, ambitious, and youthful. I love this little album.  Hear it now at

goo.gl/2i15ZS

BUT—IF YOU WANT MORE MUSIC AND MORE CONNECTION...

I'm thrilled to announce the launch of my Patreon page.

goo.gl/XjkcFH

Join to get The Gothic for FREE, and to get exclusive outtakes and demos by Seeming & ThouShaltNot, videos, livestream concerts, and writing on the history of music and subculture—plus postcards, weird poetry, and cat pictures.