Everything Is Available And Then The Machines Talk

Merrily prancing through the dystopian posies

Berkeley Cat Records is scandalized to confirm, Everything Is Stupid And Then We Die by Coalition of the Illin’ is now live and available in:

Pandora | Apple | YouTube | Spotify and of course, our beloved Bandcamp, plus in a bevy of other services. A scathing indictment of, well, everything, the track was produced by Eric Din in the beginning of June of 2026. Mr. Din has long wanted to use the monicker, Coalition of the Illin’, but until this work he has not felt he had a composition appropriate to the purpose. So begins a catalogue of hip-hop avant-garde bedroom production Frankentracks, and we do not know how far into this rabbit hole he shall go. We have heard waftings of a new Coalition of the Illin’ piece from said bedroom studio, and can assure our readers it is sufficiently illin’.

Now then. Eric Din immediately followed the above conflagration with a new power-pop number called In Another Life, returning decisively to his creative home base of guitars, melodies, more melodies and guitars, and a generally pop rock song structure. We at Berkeley Cat Records Corporate Analytics Headquarters (BCRCAH) have identified a pattern wherein Mr. Din makes pop music after his wilder excursions, only to then pivot back to the experimental wild again. Our scientists are confounded. Calls to Din’s feline managers have gone unreturned, but we do understand he is actively seeking a Kazoo, for the next Coalition of the Illin’ outburst.

In other mews,

I had an odd moment his week, when I looked at my Substack on my sillyphone, and saw an option for the thing to speak at me. Curious, I pawed the selection, and sure enough, a computer voice started reading aloud my latest post. I will say my first reaction was horror. You made an Ai-voice, for me, for my words, for my content, my voice, me me me? Without asking me? Naughty robot.

But this morning I researched it a bit and see that:
1. I can’t turn that off, and
2. Thankfully, on reflection, I don’t want to turn it off. It’s presented as an accessibility option, on the end-user side, so anyone with blindness or limited sight can listen, rather than read. Looked at from this point of view, I applaud the feature. Yay for the robots, in this case. Apparently I could replace the audio with my own voice reading it, but I can’t practically do that for every post.

I do sometimes read my posts aloud on my PodCATs, but only sometimes. At Berkeley Cat Records we do whatever we want, when we have time, which is sometimes.

I will close this post with a visit to the way-ish back-ish machine, for I recently heard Donkeyfish again, as part of an algorithmic playlist. More good robots. It’s a fun ska jaunt, and as Joe Strummer once declared, “some of it was true!”

“I got Skatalites on my satellite radio,” I exalted, and I do, I do.

Happy Caturday and we hope you enjoy our tunes,

Eric Roy Dinwiddie
Berkeley Cat Records Exalter In Chief (EIC)