The Future and the Return

After Trust Machine (R03), the next step was to assume the systems keep growing and the technology mostly works. What kind of person lives there? That became Neon Bones — The Future. The obvious trap was cyberpunk: rain, neon, drones, loneliness, "technology bad". The rule we set: the city is not a failure. It works, it impresses, it may even be comfortable. The question is what happens when technology succeeds but people forget why human presence matters.

Three videos look at the same city from different angles. Plastic Cowboys shows what the city looks like. Neon Bones shows how it feels to live there: a plant through cracked concrete, a saxophonist under a railway bridge, an improvised fire, and finally morning light. The city is not destroyed; the light changes and people look differently. Cattle Classified shows how the city thinks: everything categorised, orderly, even desirable, until something will not fit, here a flock of birds moving between drones and towers. Three recurring figures move through these spaces as largely anonymous archetypes; more backstory would turn them into conventional lead characters.

By now the clips were building a world through repetition rather than explanation: fire, rain, stars, an old steakhouse, a red phone box, an observatory, a white feather, warm amber against cold synthetic light. Fire turned out to be the unplanned spine: feast on the first album, tradition on the second, inner compass on the third, humanity on the fourth.

That made the epilogue logical. A Very Meaty Christmas is The Return, not a fifth chapter. The risk was novelty fatigue, so it varies across glam rock, boogie, blues, Americana, folk, power ballad and art rock, and includes tracks that are barely jokes. The Quiet Between the Bells returns to Trust Machine, The Stars Were Always There to Neon Bones, Another Silent Night to the fields. Christmas Around the Fire is the true finale: "Different gods, different names / Different centuries, same old flames."