The Wytches

Watch / Listen HERE

Photo credit: Steve Gullick 

Sometimes, you have to go backwards to go forwards. That’s precisely what The Wytches have done on Talking Machine, the band’s fifth full-length out 10th October via Alcopop! Records. Today they share the title-track as a single.

While The Wytches – now consisting of Kristian Bell (lead vocals/guitar), Daniel Rumsey (bass), Mark Breed (keyboards/guitar) and Bhav Thaker (drums) – have had a rather anachronistic aspect to them since forming in Peterborough in 2011, there was a very intentional push to summon influences from the past for this album’s 11 songs.

A longstanding part of the UK punk scene, gaining support from the likes of Pitchfork, DIY, The Line Of Best Fit, The Needledrop, CRACK, Consequence, FLOOD, The Guardian, NME, KEXP, Radio X, and more.

Kristian explains on the new single and album title, “I saw the term “Talking Machine” in a book I was reading about Thomas Edison. It was a nickname for gramophones. I thought that was fitting enough for an album title, but I guess like a lot of people, the whole AI thing has been on my mind a lot and I saw a connection there too. Thomas Edison would host these events called Tone Tests where he’d demonstrate how much audio recordings had advanced by fooling the audience in to thinking they were listening to musicians playing live but it was actually all pre-recorded, playing from a gramophone. People feared that a lot of jobs in the entertainment industry and beyond would be replaced by technology, a lot like what’s going on now.”

Watch / Listen to ‘Talking Machine’ HERE

‘Talking Machine’ single artwork | Download here

From the moment it kicks off with the rollicking surf garage rock of the title track, Talking Machine opens a portal to an earlier, more innocent era of rock’n’roll, a period when bands would make an album by recording it in the same room together. It’s no surprise, then, that, for the first time since 2014’s debut, Annabel Dream Reader, this record was made that way too. Self-produced by the band and engineered by Luke Oldfield, the Talking Machine really leans into the analogue way of doing things, capturing The Wytches in all their raw and unfiltered glory. It means that there’s a real purity to these songs – and a noticeably human purity at that.

Probably the biggest impetus and inspiration for that need to sound authentic and human came from a very specific time when Bell  was working at a record shop. While doing so, he was listening to a lot of music from the ’60s, but also some “trashy ’60s revival bands from the ’80s” such as The Milkshakes and The Cannibals, all of whom created a heavy kind of music without any of the sonic tricks the band had used before. Because Bell doesn’t have a Spotify account, it was the first time he’d really made that connection.

Talking Machine is a record that thrives and flourishes from the connection the four-piece had in the studio, even though it was Thaker’s first time recording with the band – he’d only started playing with them in mid-2024. Not that you can tell. There’s a palpable chemistry to these songs.

Everything on this record is very real, very raw, very human, very pure. That, in itself, is a reflection of how The Wytches are doing this for the right reason – because they love it. By exploring the past on this album, and by bringing those older recording techniques to the forefront in the studio, they’ve infused that love into these songs. As a result, they sound utterly refreshed, renewed and revitalised. Not only can you hear that in the fabric of these songs, but also in the band’s attitude towards them.

The Wytches are:

Kristian Bell (vocals/guitar)
Daniel Rumsey (bass)
Mark Breed (guitar/keyboard)
Bhav Thaker (drums)

Talking Machine

out 10th October via Alcopop Records

Pre-save/Pre-order HERE

Tour Dates

07/10/2025 – HotBox, Chelmsford, UK
08/10/2025 – Where Else?, Margate, UK
09/10/2025 – The Joiners, Southampton, UK
10/10/2025 – Bunkhouse, Swansea, Wales
11/10/2025 – Cornish Bank, Falmouth, UK
14/10/2025 – Thekla, Bristol, UK
15/10/2025 – Hare and Hounds, Birmingham, UK
17/10/2025 – The Bodega, Nottingham, UK
18/10/2025 – Docks Academy, Grimsby, UK
22/10/2025 – Night and Day, Manchester, UK

24/10/2025 – FutureYard, Birkenhead, UK
25/10/2025 – The Fulford Arms, York, UK
28/10/2025 – Cluny, Newcastle, UK
29/10/2025 – Nice N Sleazy, Glasgow, UK
30/10/2025 – Sneaky Petes, Edinburgh, UK
05/11/2025 – Dust, Brighton, UK
06/11/2025 – The Garage, London, UK
11/11/2025 – Point Ephemere, Paris, France
12/11/2025 – Buhmann&Sonn, Cologne, Germany
14/11/2025 – Merkeyn, Nijmegen, Netherlands
15/11/2025 – (Tough Enough Festival) Botanique, Brussels, Belgium
16/11/2025 – Molotow (Downstairs), Hamburg, Germany
18/11/2025 – Neue Zukunft, Berlin, Germany

Tickets available HERE

Talking Machine album artwork

Talking Machine

out 10th October via Alcopop Records

01. Talking Machine

02. Black Ice

03. Coffin Nails

04. Perform

05. Factory

06. Romance

07. Is The World Too Old?

08. Nothing To See

09. When The Obsession Began

10. Don’t Make It For Me

11. Romance End

Pre-save/Pre-order HERE

About The Wytches:

Sometimes, you have to go backwards to go forwards. That’s precisely what The Wytches have done on Talking Machine, the Brighton band’s fifth full-length. In more ways than one, too. For a start, the title of the record was inspired by a book about Thomas Edison, whose nickname for gramophones was ‘talking machine’. Then there’s the music itself. While The Wytches – now consisting of Kristian Bell (lead vocals/guitar), Daniel Rumsey (bass), Mark Breed (keyboards/guitar) and Bhav Thaker (drums) – have had a rather anachronistic aspect to them since forming in Peterborough in 2011, there was a very intentional push to summon influences from the past for this album’s 11 songs.

From the moment it kicks off with the rollicking surf garage rock of the title track, Talking Machine opens a portal to an earlier, more innocent era of rock’n’roll, a period when bands would make an album by recording it in the same room together. It’s no surprise, then, that, for the first time since 2014’s debut, Annabel Dream Reader, this record was made that way too. Self-produced by the band and engineered by Luke Oldfield, the Talking Machine really leans into the analogue way of doing things, capturing The Wytches in all their raw and unfiltered glory. It means that there’s a real purity to these songs – and a noticeably human purity at that.

“We’re always just trying to keep it real,” says Bell, “and I think that stands out these days. The most important thing is that it doesn’t sound sterile. Obviously, we’ve tried to do that before without doing it live, but recording the album like this made it this very human thing.” “Even the little slip-ups that we had,” adds Thaker, “which at first made us want to redo them were actually the bits that made the song sound like human beings playing them.”  “You can sit there tracking guitar or whatever,” says Breed, “and then you make the slightest little movement that you think sounds bad on the record – but you wouldn’t even notice it if you’d just done it live. You just tend to fixate on it too much in the studio, so we really tried to not do that.”

Probably the biggest impetus and inspiration for that need to sound authentic and human came from a very specific time when Bell  was working at a record shop. While doing so, he was listening to a lot of music from the ’60s, but also some “trashy ’60s revival bands from the ’80s” such as The Milkshakes and The Cannibals, all of whom created a heavy kind of music without any of the sonic tricks the band had used before. Because Bell doesn’t have a Spotify account, it was the first time he’d really made that connection.

“I’ve always liked ‘60s music,” he says, “but I started noticing how sonically big it actually was. It just sounded so massive to me. I used to think that was before bands had all the real tools, but it’s way more impactful. I can see why people used to dance to rock music, as opposed to moshing, because it’s just so pumping. So I just started trying to put away any trickery and just do simple ‘60s songs with a bit of a twist.”

‘Black Ice’ – three snarling but glorious minutes of dark psych/surf rock – was the first result of that attempt to write in that style, and it set the tone for everything else that followed, both in terms of the end result, and the creative process that got things there. “It’s really a super simple song,” says Thaker. “We called it ‘Garage’ for a long time, because the influences are very clear. It’s very straightforward garage rock. But it’s good to keep things simple sometimes, because it kind of hits more.”

That’s the case throughout the album. Talking Machine is a record that thrives and flourishes from the connection the four-piece had in the studio, even though it was Thaker’s first time recording with the band – he’d only started playing with them in mid-2024. Not that you can tell. There’s a palpable chemistry to these songs, from the dark, gritty surge of ‘Coffin Nails’ to slow-motion gloom of both ‘Factory’ and ‘Don’t Make It For Me’, from the hauntingly delicate ‘Is The World Too Old?’ to the continuous crescendo of ‘When The Obsession Began’.

Primal and visceral, these are songs made to make you feel, that bury themselves in your skin, your blood, your heart, and which do, indeed, sound sonically massive. Yet there’s plenty of emotion here, too – especially on ‘Romance’ and ‘Romance 2’, the songs that, respectively, bring sides one and two of this record to an end. Two sides of one coin, they’re the same but different, vulnerable and haunted, ghosts of ghosts shimmering with emotional gravitas, especially the latter with its mournful piano. Not that the band necessarily see it that way.

“That little piano bit was just done in the studio,” says Breed. “Luke had the piano there and I was just playing it. But I don’t even think about it being sad. It’s just how it sounds. I play music to people all the time and they’ll say ‘This is a bit sad, isn’t it?’ but I just don’t think of it like that.” “It’s more of a musical preference,” adds Bell. “I really littered my brain with a load of sad music when I was a kid, and I still just kind of do that.”

Regardless of whether that melancholy is deliberate or not, it’s definitely present. And just like everything else on this record, it’s very real, very raw, very human, very pure. That, in itself, is a reflection of how The Wytches are doing this for the right reason – because they love it. By exploring the past on this album, and by bringing those older recording techniques to the forefront in the studio, they’ve infused that love into these songs. As a result, they sound utterly refreshed, renewed and revitalised. Not only can you hear that in the fabric of these songs, but also in the band’s attitude towards them.

“I used to get very nervous the day before we put music out,” admits Bell, “and then it’d be a big relief when you didn’t get laughed off the face of the earth. Now, I just feel really excited to put it out. I don’t just want us to be a nostalgia act for the people who loved the first album. We want to put new music out and excite them all over again.”