The Chemical Brothers’ “RING THE ALARM” Mystery
On Thursday evening, I got an email that instantly hit the part of my brain that’s been wired by years of The Chemical Brothers.
“The Chemical Brothers has just dropped new music.”
Title: RING THE ALARM.
One click. Spotify opens. Play.
And the track? It didn’t feel random. It felt… right. The kind of tense, kinetic energy I’ve always loved The Chemical Brothers for — the feeling that the room is about to tilt, in the best way.
Then came the twist: a few days later, the artist attribution changed. The Chemical Brothers disappeared from the release credit on Spotify (at least from where I saw it), and suddenly I wasn’t just listening — I was following a thread.
This is the story of what happened, what I learned, and why it made me appreciate the joy of discovering new music early — without the usual FOMO.
What I saw (and when)
1) The email that started it
On Thu, Dec 4, 2025, at 7:07 PM UTC, I received a Friend's Tapes email:
“The Chemical Brothers just dropped a new release. It’s called ‘RING THE ALARM’.”
2) The Spotify release page
The Spotify album page is:
What made this story click for me is that I saw it change.
Before (Dec 4):
After (today):
3) The “wait… why did the artist change?” moment
Some time after that first listen, I checked back and the release didn’t look the same anymore.
And weirdly — it didn’t annoy me. It felt like the opening scene of a better story: the track stayed great, but now I wanted to know who had actually made it, and why The Chemical Brothers name was in the credit line at first — and then replaced.
The part I didn’t expect: it was a new project, not a Chemical Brothers single
The most grounded explanation is also the coolest one:
TOMORA is a new duo featuring Tom Rowlands (The Chemical Brothers) and AURORA.
So: this wasn’t The Chemical Brothers “as the band” dropping a surprise single.
It was Tom Rowlands, in a new duo, shipping something new — and it briefly surfaced to me through a Chemical Brothers-shaped doorway.
Why did The Chemical Brothers show up on the release at all?
Sometimes the way a track is credited across platforms is inconsistent during release week, especially when:
- a member of a famous act is involved
- a new artist profile is brand-new
- distribution metadata is still settling
That doesn’t mean “The Chemical Brothers” (the full duo) are the releasing artist — but it shows how the Chemical Brothers name can appear in release packaging, which can cascade into “this looks like a Chemical Brothers release” in the real world.
Why Spotify changes credits after release week
This kind of thing happens more than fans realize.
Spotify has a help page specifically for music mixed up with another artist, including guidance for reporting it.
In practical terms, credit changes can happen because:
- the song was routed to the wrong artist profile (mapping/disambiguation issue)
- the distributor uploaded with an imperfect artist association and later corrected it
- a new project’s profiles/credits weren’t fully stabilized on day one
I’m not claiming which one happened behind the scenes here — I don’t have Spotify’s internal data — but the behavior (“it shows up one way, then gets corrected”) matches the general pattern.
The best part (for me): I found a new “future favorite” early
This is the part a pure report can’t capture — but it’s the real reason this story matters to music people:
- I really liked the track. It landed inside that Chemical Brothers zone I’ve loved for years — the tension, the drive, the sense of motion.
- The second I realized “wait, this might be a new project,” I subscribed to TOMORA on FriendsTapes immediately.
- I didn’t get the usual “everyone already knows this and I’m late” feeling. I had the opposite: I was early.
- And the artist credit changing didn’t kill the vibe — it revealed a better one: it pushed me to learn the names behind the name, and to understand what TOMORA actually is.
That’s a very specific kind of joy: finding something new, fast, with almost zero effort, and then realizing it has depth.
Where FriendsTapes fit in this moment
This was basically a perfect demo of what Friend's Tapes is for:
- I got the alert instantly.
- I listened immediately.
- I discovered a new project at the exact moment it appeared.
- When the credits shifted later, I didn’t lose anything — because I’d already found the track, saved it, and subscribed to the project behind it.
The value wasn’t “Spotify is wrong.”
The value was: music discovery, without noise, and without being late.
One simple next step
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