Kieran Hebden, best known as the electronic artist Four Tet, has released a new album under his unpronounceable alter ego, an alias rendered entirely in unusual symbols and characters. The record first appeared last month as a limited-edition vinyl pressing before arriving digitally, and it quickly gained attention less for its music than for the technical havoc its deliberately garbled metadata caused when fans tried to import the files. The episode matters as a playful example of an established artist turning distribution itself into a kind of prank.

The digital version was released on Bandcamp on 2 July, following a vinyl run capped at just 2,000 copies. Several buyers reported that the chaotic file names crashed or broke apps such as iTunes and their iPods, with one purchaser noting he spent $6 only to find not a single track would play despite repeated attempts. An alternative soon followed, as the album landed on streaming services the next day; Hebden acknowledged the release on Instagram in a post written entirely in Wingdings, while even the Apple Music bio joined the joke, "roughly" translating the symbols as "mesmeric new tracks from Kieran 'Four Tet' Hebden."