Some quick housekeeping:
Only six tickets remaining for my June 23rd show with the Forager Band at Cameron House in Toronto, get your tix here
I’ve added some new items to the merch store: Forager test pressings (only one left), the Forager denim vinyl variant originally only available at the markets, and a few copies of my new book Ways of Listening (this is for all the people from outside Canada asking me how they can get a copy)
When I was writing Ways of Listening, I originally didn’t plan to write an AI essay at all. But over time, it became necessary for me to reckon with what had rapidly become an inescapable part of modern life. Much like truffles at restaurants a few years ago, AI is being put into everything, whether we like it or not. In the book, I approach the technology largely from the artist’s perspective. I compare Spotify’s clunky AI DJ to masters like NTS’s Flo Dill and Theo Parrish, whose prior successes and failures colour every new set they share with their audiences.
AI writing has become a plague in the months since I wrote my book. The telltale machine voice, replete with guilty em dashes and “It’s not just ____, it’s ____” sentences, has made encountering lively human prose akin to stumbling upon a water fountain after trudging through the Sahara desert. I’ve become absolutely ravenous for real writing, a somewhat unexpected by-product of today’s technological shift.
One part of the book that has proven to be particularly significant is my research on AI data centres. A 2025 MIT News report said that these servers are estimated to use 1,050 terawatts of energy this year. If data centres were a nation, that would put their energy usage in fifth place on the global list, right between Japan and Russia.
A case study I use is Elon Musk’s Grok AI data centre in Boxtown, a historically Black, low income neighbourhood in Memphis. Musk skirted environmental restrictions by using 35 gas-powered turbines that spewed nitrogen oxide and formaldehyde into the community, resulting in health problems for Boxtown residents.
It was with that research in mind that I decided to make the video above. As part of Canadian prime minister Mark Carney’s drive to rapidly build more AI data centres across the country, Slate Asset Management is trying to build “a world-class AI, advanced manufacturing, and clean infrastructure district” on the old Stelco steel mill lands, which are a five minute drive away from where my wife, two-year-old son and I live in Hamilton.
In the four years we’ve lived here, the neglect of the city by all levels of government has been impossible to ignore. The main street right by where we live is regularly rated the worst maintained road in Canada. The decline of the local steel industry has left deep environmental wounds and unrelenting economic uncertainty. And now they want to build an AI data centre down the street, which could have an impact on the already-fragile power grid and could potentially cause a 24 / 7 low frequency hum from the cooling fans that has been reported by affected citizens in other cities to cause migraines, insomnia and other health problems.
There is a sense that AI is here and the uptake of the technology by the public is all but inevitable. I bristle against that. They said the same thing about NFTs. The people of Hamilton said no with hundreds of people writing letters and coming to protest at city hall, causing part of the project to be denied by Hamilton’s Committee of Adjustment. My video helped to mobilize people, leading me to talk about my issues with the Hamilton data centre and AI in general on CBC’s Rosemary Barton Live over the weekend:
The fight continues. What is happening in Hamilton could be coming to your city next. I hope we are building a framework for how to resist. In Carney’s AI plan, there is no mention of protecting the intellectual property of Canadian artists whose work is being scraped by AI algorithms without compensation. We need to speak out until we are publicly consulted and meaningfully involved in these developments.
I’ll be in conversation with fellow Substacker and journalist Paul Wells on June 20th at Hugh’s Room alongside such esteemed guests as Mayor Olivia Chow. I hope it might be a bit like when James Baldwin would go on the Dick Cavett Show. I might even play a few songs. You can get your tickets here.
You can find me updating my playlists or hanging on TikTok, Instagram and Bluesky. You can listen to my music on Apple Music, Bandcamp and Spotify. You can get Cadence Weapon merchandise here. Pick up your copy of Ways of Listening here and please rate it on Goodreads.
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