We Speak Music
Dylan Rippon’s future punk-disco classic “Destroy The Now” gets vinyl release!

One of the finest British albums of the last twenty years, ‘Destroy The Now’ by Dylan Rippon has just come out on Limited Edition Vinyl to coincide with the release of instant indie classic ‘Sunburn’ which was featured on SKY in a recent feature length documentary film ‘The Warhol Effect’ which explores the late work and legacy of Andy Warhol.
The power of Dylan Rippon’s music rests in his extraordinary sensitivity to the dislocation of the modern experience combined with the stark beauty of his melodies. Throughout the album, Dylan instinctively weaves darkness and light into beauty. ‘Forever’ is a love song for the ages. Anguished and eternal. ‘Mobius Trip’ is a twisted electronic nightmare of folding and unfolding worlds. ‘All Too Human’ is the prayer of everyone standing on the edge of oblivion. ‘Futurismo’ is for a man who knows the future but will never live to see it. ‘Listen’ is the voice that calls from the liminal world.
And new single ‘Sunburn’ explodes the agony of panic in a glorious synthesis of punk and disco.
Dylan explains this recording as follows, “I started work on ‘Destroy The Now’ around the same time that I was asked to write the music for a new documentary about Andy Warhol called ‘The Warhol Effect’ (dir. by Paul Toogood and Lloyd Stanton). I wanted to make sound in the same way Warhol made images, at the speed of light. Andy was the first to repeat, repeat, repeat. He could paint in code. He was his own algorithm. Marshall McLuhan, my only spiritual guide, understood the digital human as a spirit, disembodied by light itself. He said, ‘everybody at the speed of light becomes a nobody’. And he knew what this separation of the body and soul would do to our lives. ‘Violence whether spiritual or physical is a quest for identity and the meaningful. The less identity, the more
violence.’ I started thinking about the violence of digital life, the way it ‘destroys the now’. Warhol spent a lot of time thinking about the violence of car crashes and electric chairs, teenage kids dead on the sidewalk but all over the evening news, violence as a destiny. Maybe that’s why Valerie Solanas tried to murder him. After that, it didn’t take long for the songs to manifest themselves. It was automatic. I didn’t even have to try. ‘Listen!’ was the Universe telling me to wake up, to be aware. ‘Futurismo’ was for Antonio Sant’Elia. He imagined skyscrapers and futuristic city-scapes but was killed in the First World War before he ever saw his dreams come true. ‘Mobius Trip’ is the ‘eternal return’, Nietzsche’s horror concept that we are all destined to live our lives again, every thought, decision and action the same as the first time around. ‘Forever/Eternity Song’ is a love song. It may be the greatest love song ever written. ‘All Too Human’ borrows its title from ‘Human, All Too Human: A Book For Free Spirits’. The robots are already more human than we are. They feel, we scroll. The digital human is all too human to be real. ‘Divider’ is a song about memory, about losing love long ago when you could feel the streets and breathe the night. ‘Sunburn’ is a panic attack transformed into glorious light. ‘Momentum’ is a prayer. I mastered the album at Abbey Road. Richard Bull created a beautiful painting for the sleeve. I had the feeling that I’d made something really special.”
Baring the hallmarks of a dystopian world spraypainted musically by Kraftwerk, Air, Future Islands, The Killers, Gary Numan, John Lennon, The Cure and David Bowie, Dylan’s influences as cited above are laid bare for all to see but only he could have put something this comprehensive together. A cult gem for the modern age made from a gifted light of life devoted to music and art. This may well be Dylan Rippon’s finest hour and the perfect bridge to connect Gen X and Gen Z.
‘Destroy The Now’ is out now on Hero Rhymes With Zero. Order the vinyl now here.

We Speak Music
Acclaimed US singer-songwriter Juliet Lloyd to tour the UK for the first time this summer.
Shortly after releasing her sophomore album in 2007, US-based singer-songwriter Juliet Lloyd walked away from music completely for more than 10 years, feeling burned out and unhappy with her career progression like so many other independent artists. After going through a divorce in 2019 and in the midst of a global pandemic, she found herself pulled back toward the siren call of songwriting and again making the leap to pursue it full time. Her latest album ‘Carnival’, released in 2024, is in many ways the culmination of those decisions, and the reintroduction of an artist who now has the wisdom of experience.
There’s an unmistakable urgency you can feel when a song is written and performed from a place of complete honesty. That feeling permeates ‘Carnival’. “I’ve always been envious of writers who say they write songs because they have to, because they had these things they just had to get out of themselves,” Juliet says. “I had never really felt that way until this album. I’ve become someone who writes because they have to.”
Stylistically, ‘Carnival’ draws on a range of influences from Laurel Canyon-era singer/songwriters, to Lilith Fair rockers, to confessional country/folk balladeers, to indie pop. The central theme of the record and that of its title track is not being too precious about any one experience or decision. Take them for what they are, live in the moment, and move on when they’re done. It acknowledges also that memory can be subjective, and ambiguous—was an experience ultimately a good thing or a bad thing? And whose memory can you rely on to determine the answer to that question?
‘Carnival’ doesn’t just deal with the complexities of ending relationships, it also deals with all the feelings that come with moving on. The album’snine songs feature evocative storytelling that reveals a simple truth: when the carnival inevitably leaves town, you’re left with an empty parking lot. And how you remember, it is a choice. As Juliet sings in the title track, “If only there was a way you could bottle up that feeling / and you’d drink it in / when the days are short and you long.”
Across her 20+ year career, Juliet has been admittedly stylistically non-monogamous. Her first full-length album, ‘All Dressed Up’, was released in 2005 and was heavily jazz-influenced- a label that she rejected at the time. “I am a piano player and a woman, so I was immediately compared to Norah Jones—and I bristled at that,” Juliet says. “Listening back now, I can totally see that it was true, and it of course wasn’t a bad thing.” Her follow-up release ‘Leave the Light On,’ came out two years later and featured a slick piano-pop production that led to five of its songs being placed on reality TV shows on MTV and VH1. Coming back after her 10-year break from writing and recording, Juliet released ‘High Road’, a collection of five Americana/soul-tinged songs produced by Jim Ebert (Meredith Brooks, Shai) that earned her widespread recognition and songwriting awards both in her home region of DC as well as nationally.
Now with her first ever UK tour scheduled for July 2025, Juliet has also dropped a completely brand-new single ‘Wild Again’, which like ‘Carnival’, was written with and produced by Todd Wright (Lucy Woodward, Butch Walker, Toby Lightman). ‘Wild Again’, however, charts yet another new step in Juliet’s journey.
“Carnival’, is full of deeply personal songs that are drawn from my real-life experiences and relationships. Coming out of that album cycle, I was feeling a little exhausted by my own navel-gazing and I was craving inspiration elsewhere. So, a lot of the songs I’m writing now are an evolution of sorts – focused more on external stimuli and finding the personal stories and humanity in that. Wild Again is a perfect example of this,” she explains.
The idea for ‘Wild Again’ was born out of a NY Times podcast Juliet listened to about the real-life efforts to return the whale that played Willy in the iconic movie ‘Free Willy’ back into the wild.
“It’s an insane, heartbreaking story that asks all kinds of thorny questions about human responsibility and humility and what’s the “right” thing to do and is that the same as the “kind” thing to do. There was a line that one of the trainers said in the podcast, explaining that they were trying to “train him to be wild again.” The complete absurdity of that statement hit me in the moment, and I immediately started jotting down lyrical ideas”, Juliet says.
Catch Juliet Lloyd on her UK tour this July:
1st July: The Folklore Rooms / Brighton
2nd July: The Hyde Tavern / Winchester
3rd July: Hen and Chicken / Bristol (CRH Music promotions)
4th July: Artisan Tap Hartshill / Stoke-on-Trent
5th July: Waggon & Horses, Nottingham
6th July: Cafe#9 / Sheffield
7th July: Hyde Park Book Club / Leeds
10th July: FortyFive Vinyl Café / York
11th July: The Muddy Puddle / London
13th July: The Wrotham Arms / Broadstairs

-
We Speak AAU Basketball4 days ago
Future Floor General: Savage F.O.E.’s PG Kyan Mains Is Turning Heads On The AAU Circuit
-
We Speak Volleyball1 week ago
Serving Up Power and Positivity: Spotlight on Volleyball Standout Hannah Edgeworth
-
We Speak Coaches1 day ago
Lockdown Leadership: Inside The Mind Of Jonesboro High School’s Defensive Backs Coach Ced Brooks
-
We Speak Track And Field4 days ago
Every Step Earned, Every Sprint Fought For: How Parker Duskin Trains, Thinks, And Races Like An Elite Sprinter in the Making