There is something darkly playful about SIREN’s latest release, “No More”. Exploring the complications of marriage, lifelong promises and the rather inconvenient matter of death, the song takes the familiar idea of “till death do us part” and gives it a decidedly different interpretation. Its accompanying music video, directed and edited by Wayne Joyner, takes the story into the afterlife, where unresolved relationship issues apparently have a habit of following you.
Featuring the band as skeletons, pumpkins and plenty of Halloween-inspired imagery, the video brings a healthy dose of dark humour to a song that is surprisingly uplifting musically. We caught up with SIREN to discuss the inspiration behind “No More”, the creative collaboration with Wayne Joyner, the making of the video and the ideas that brought this rather unusual love story to life.
1. Tell us the story of this song, why did you choose to visualize the song specifically in this way?
“No More” explores a Married couple questioning their vows and the meaning of “till death do us part” aspect. Wayne created the video and went straight to the afterlife and it really worked well for this song.
2. What was the inspiration behind this video? (visual, storyline, etc.)?
That was Wayne’s vision and He nailed it!!!
3. What was the process of making this video?
We went through about four drafts before it was completed. The band as skeletons, pumpkins and the smoking candle were all from input from Randy, Mike and I. We thought we might as well make a Halloween video. I believe it came out fantastic.
David Diaz’s latest single “Are We Gonna Talk?” is built around bright synths, an infectious rhythmic pulse and the kind of melodic immediacy that makes ’80s-inspired pop so enduring. Yet beneath that buoyant production lies a much more complicated story about disappointment, unanswered messages and the moment you realise a friendship may have run its course.
The song began with a falling out between Diaz and a close friend. Having repeatedly made himself available when the other person needed him, he eventually found himself asking for something relatively simple in return: time and company. When that never materialised, the frustration became impossible to ignore. One unanswered promise to call back, followed by weeks of silence, provided the unlikely starting point for a song that would eventually become one of his most immediately engaging releases.
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Written and recorded on the very night of the incident, “Are We Gonna Talk?” captures the emotion before time had softened its edges. There is confusion, irritation and a growing recognition that sometimes another person’s silence tells you everything you need to know. Rather than getting lost in the details of one particular friendship, however, Diaz leaves room for listeners to bring their own experiences to the song. Its pronouns and phrasing allow the story to extend beyond friendship into the wider territory of relationships, family and the people we once expected to be there for us.
The track takes a very different route from its emotional subject matter. Driving drums, bright keyboard lines and a satisfyingly funky undercurrent give it a polished synth-pop character, drawing on the sounds of the 1980s while keeping its feet firmly in contemporary pop. Diaz’s affection for that era is genuine, extending beyond music into its films, visual culture and distinctive sense of atmosphere. The intention isn’t to recreate a particular moment in pop history but to take the elements he loves and make them his own.
Producer Luke Kondak proved an important part of that process, helping translate Diaz’s ideas into a fully realised arrangement. The production retains much of the original demo’s character, including the slightly gritty, distorted quality of the lead vocal. Layered harmonies and call-and-response passages add movement, while the contrast between the bright instrumental backdrop and the song’s more bruised lyrical perspective gives it much of its appeal.
There is also an interesting story behind the single’s accompanying visual campaign. Initially reluctant to make a music video, Diaz was persuaded by friends Kahlil Antonio and Abiesel Báez to take the concept in an altogether more theatrical direction. The result is an affectionate nod to B-movie slasher films, complete with a group of supposed David Diaz detractors, a scrapbook documenting their grievances and a masked figure determined to deal with the situation. The eventual revelation that the avenger is Diaz himself gives the video a knowingly ridiculous twist, turning the idea of removing toxic influences from your life into a wonderfully over-the-top horror-comedy premise.
It is an entertaining extension of the song’s themes, but there is a more significant change taking place behind the scenes. Are We Gonna Talk? marks Diaz’s first solo release since 2023, following a period in which he deliberately stepped away from the demands of regular releases and the expectation that an artist should constantly be generating content, chasing numbers and maintaining momentum. That time allowed him to reconsider what he wanted from music. He still wants people to hear his songs, but he is increasingly interested in the connection that can happen between an artist and a listener than in the pursuit of attention for its own sake.
That perspective gives the single an appealing sense of freedom. It is catchy, carefully produced and clearly designed to make an impression, but it also feels like the work of someone who has stopped worrying quite so much about what the industry expects. Even the original friendship that inspired the song has since been repaired, allowing Diaz to revisit the experience with a degree of distance and humour.
“Are We Gonna Talk?” succeeds because it brings together two seemingly opposing qualities: an immediately accessible pop sound and a story rooted in the uncomfortable realities of human relationships. David Diaz has turned a moment of personal frustration into something bright, playful and surprisingly universal.
More importantly, he seems to be enjoying the process again, and that enthusiasm comes through in every part of the record.
There is something revealing about a song written from the perspective of someone who wants to be understood but cannot quite find the words to explain themselves. It is an emotional contradiction that sits at the heart of Miriam Armonie’s “You Should Know,” a single that explores the uncomfortable territory between attraction and avoidance, vulnerability and self-preservation, and the things we want from other people versus the things we feel equipped to give them.
Emerging from New York’s creative scene, Armonie is building a musical identity around atmosphere, and a willingness to let different influences inform her songwriting. Her latest single draws on personal experience, revisiting a relationship in which someone wanted more from her than she felt able to offer.
At the time, she was focused on establishing her career and lacked the emotional maturity and experience to navigate the situation with the sensitivity it deserved. The person in question was someone she cared about deeply, which only made the decision to distance herself more difficult. Rather than risk leading him on, she chose to cut contact altogether, a decision she now recognises could have been handled differently.
That backstory gives “You Should Know” its weight. This is a song shaped by hindsight, by the realisation that protecting yourself from a situation you do not know how to manage can leave another person hurt and unanswered questions lingering long after the moment has passed. There is an important distinction here between not wanting someone and not knowing how to make room for them in your life. Armonie is interested in exploring the possibility that feelings can be genuine even when the person experiencing them is unable to act on them in a healthy or constructive way.
The song also touches on the complicated relationship between avoidance and vulnerability. Sometimes, withdrawing feels easier than explaining yourself, particularly when you are still learning how to articulate your own insecurities. The difficulty is that silence can communicate something very different from what you intended. In looking back at her own behaviour, Armonie allows herself to acknowledge the hurt she may have caused without dismissing the reasons behind her decision. It is an honest, recognisable form of reflection, and one that gives the song more nuance than a straightforward tale of missed romantic opportunity.
Musically, “You Should Know” carries the kind of soft and ambient rock landscape that is shaping Armonie’s forthcoming Blue Hour EP. The project takes its name from that fleeting period between day and night, a space that seems particularly suited to songs concerned with uncertainty, memory and emotional states. Armonie’s interest in combining genres also suggests an artist who sees sound as something to explore rather than a formula to repeat.
That curiosity is central to her approach. While Blue Hour leans towards softer, atmospheric rock, Armonie has already written material that moves into funk, groove, disco and punk. Her musical influences include Sade, Lana Del Rey, Anita Baker, Willow and Olivia Rodrigo, artists whose work demonstrates different ways of balancing a distinctive identity with an appetite for experimentation. Sade, in particular, represents an ideal for Armonie: a performer whose understated vocal delivery can convey enormous feeling without relying on theatrical excess. It is a useful reference point for an artist interested in the subtleties of emotional expression.
Beyond her own releases, Armonie is developing her work as a songwriter and producer with ambitions to create music for other artists. She is also outspoken about the importance of retaining creative control, particularly for women working in an industry where experience and authority can too easily be used to undermine their instincts. That determination to trust her own perspective is reflected in the personal nature of her writing. She is willing to revisit decisions she regrets, examine the less flattering parts of her own behaviour and consider what those experiences have taught her.
With “You Should Know,” Miriam Armonie turns an uncomfortable personal memory into an opportunity for understanding. The song’s tension lies in the gap between feeling something and knowing what to do with it, a space where good intentions can become tangled in fear, uncertainty and the inability to communicate.
As the Blue Hour project continues to take shape ahead of its 2027 release, “You Should Know” offers a compelling introduction to an artist whose songwriting is as interested in the questions we leave unanswered as it is in the emotions we find the courage to express.
Keep up with everything Miriam Armonie on her Website
Three decades is a long time for a song to wait to be heard. Somewhere between the hiss of an old four-track recorder and the shifting currents of London’s underground music scene, Chris Pascoe captured a handful of ideas that would eventually slip out of view, leaving four recordings to gather dust while life took him in other directions. Now, as SulkyMan, he has brought them back into the light, and the results are a fascinating glimpse into a period when guitar music could be gloriously wayward, instinctive and unconcerned with staying in its lane.
Recorded around 1995 on a Yamaha MT50 four track analogue recorder, these songs have survived without losing the curious energy that made them worth recording in the first place. There are wiry guitars, restless rhythms, unexpected melodic turns and an appealing roughness that feels inseparable from their character. Rather than sounding like relics retrieved for nostalgia’s sake, the four tracks reveal a songwriter already comfortable following an idea wherever it leads. What emerges is not simply a document of Pascoe’s musical past, but a reminder that some songs can outlive the circumstances in which they were created and still have a few surprises left.
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The title track opens the collection with shimmering jangling guitars and a beautifully measured bass part that gives the arrangement warmth and movement. There is a natural swing to the music, an ease in the way the melodic elements find their places, and spaciousness that allows the song to unfold without losing its infectious quality. It has the DNA of classic nineties indie, when guitar bands could be melodic without becoming predictable and atmospheric without disappearing into their own introspection. Yet there is something appealingly timeless about it, too. Had “The Things I Said” emerged during the original heyday of the Britpop era, it would not have sounded out of place. Heard now, it carries the pleasure of discovering a song that has somehow escaped the usual boundaries of its time.
“I Wonder Why” takes a more unsettled route. The guitars have a nervous, slightly careering quality, moving between melodic passages and rougher, more insistent textures. There are shadows of post punk in the atmosphere, with something of Echo & the Bunnymen’s brooding musicality and the ragged charm associated with Nikki Sudden. The bass deserves particular attention here, providing a fluid counterpoint to the guitars and giving the song much of its distinctive character. It is an arrangement that thrives on the interplay between its parts, with tension and melody pulling against one another in a way that keeps the listener engaged.
“Nothing Is Easy” brings a sharper edge to the collection. Its angular guitar work and snarling delivery suggest a song with little patience for easy answers, while unexpected melodic turns lend it a more playful character than the title might imply. There is a hint of the Beatles in the way the melody seems to emerge from within the song’s rougher exterior, a reminder that memorable pop instincts can survive even the most unconventional arrangements. Pascoe seems comfortable allowing these contrasting elements to coexist.
“Never Change” completes the quartet with a nod towards the more restless end of new wave and post-punk. There is a tautness to the song, a sense of unresolved movement that suits the material, while its melodic instincts keep it from becoming overly austere. Across these four recordings, that balance between accessibility and eccentricity becomes one of SulkyMan’s defining qualities. Pascoe understands that a song can be catchy without being obvious, and rough around the edges without sacrificing musical detail.
What makes the collection particularly interesting is the knowledge that these recordings represent an earlier stage in an ongoing creative life. Pascoe has travelled an unusual musical road, from his teenage years playing bass in London anarcho-punk band Part 1 to his later involvement in the underground tech-house scene, before developing SulkyMan into a solo project in which he writes, performs, records and produces his own material. Across those different worlds, he has consistently followed his own instincts rather than settling into one recognisable musical identity.
The songs collected here reveal the foundations of that independence. There is an instinctive understanding of arrangement, a willingness to let contrasting moods sit alongside one another, and a melodic sensibility that prevents the music from becoming an exercise in obscurity. The analogue limitations may have influenced the way these recordings were made, but they have not diminished their character. Instead, the music retains the sense of discovery that comes from an artist working things out for himself, following a line of thought wherever it happens to lead.
There is also something quietly moving about hearing music return after so much time. Thirty years can change the meaning of a song, even when the recording itself remains untouched. Lines written in one period of life inevitably acquire different shades of meaning when heard from another, while the sound of a younger self can become an unexpected conversation between past and present. Pascoe has spoken of his amazement at finding these recordings again, and it is easy to understand the appeal of bringing them into the world after believing they had disappeared from view.
The beauty of “The Things I Said” and its companion tracks is that they do not need their history to justify their existence. The story behind their recovery adds interest, certainly, but the music stands on its own merits. The guitars have character, the bass lines reward attention, and the melodies linger long after the songs have finished. More than anything, there is a sense of artistic freedom running through the collection, the sound of someone making music because the ideas are there and need to be followed.
Plenty of recordings from the nineties survive as nostalgic souvenirs of a particular scene or sound. SulkyMan’s rediscovered material offers something more satisfying. These four songs feel like fragments of an unfinished conversation, recovered from the past and given another chance to be heard. They are reminders that good songwriting does not necessarily come with an expiry date, and that the passage of time can occasionally turn a forgotten recording into a new beginning.
For Chris Pascoe, the past has proved to be a surprisingly fertile place to start again. With “The Things I Said”, SulkyMan brings a long-lost piece of musical history back into circulation, and finds that the songs still have plenty of life left in them.
About SulkyMan
SulkyMan is the solo project of London musician Chris Pascoe, a songwriter and multi-instrumentalist whose musical journey spans the worlds of anarcho-punk, underground electronic music and alternative guitar rock. Beginning his musical life as a teenage bass player in London anarcho-punk band Part 1, Pascoe went on to explore the underground tech house scene before developing SulkyMan as a space for his own songwriting, recording and production.
His music brings together melodic instinct, restless guitar work and a willingness to explore the space between indie rock, post-punk and pop. Unconcerned with genre boundaries, Pascoe follows his ideas wherever they lead, balancing angular arrangements and rough edged textures with memorable melodies.
SulkyMan’s latest release, The Things I Said, brings four recordings made around 1995 on a Yamaha MT50 four-track analogue recorder back into circulation. Rediscovered decades after their original creation, the tracks offer a glimpse into Pascoe’s earlier creative life, preserving the spontaneity and independent spirit of the era while revealing a songwriter whose musical instincts have stood the test of time. Rather than simply revisiting the past, SulkyMan gives these long-lost recordings a new life, allowing their distinctive character to find an audience in the present.
There is a kind of honesty that comes from looking back at difficult experiences without pretending they never happened, and without allowing them to define everything that follows. On “Damages,” the latest single from Animals in Denial, Christian Ines explores that difficult territory with a song that feels as much like a private reckoning as a piece of music. Intimate in its arrangement and deeply personal in its subject matter, it considers what happens when trust is broken, the foundations we have built our lives upon begin to shift, and we are left to work out what to do with the pieces.
Originally released on Millennial, “Damages” has now been revisited by Ines, who has taken the opportunity to restore vocal parts and harmonies that he had originally envisaged but could not fully realise with the recording equipment available at the time. The updated version brings the song closer to his original intentions, allowing its emotional subtleties to emerge while preserving the understated character that made the recording work in the first place.
Listen here:
Musically, the appeal lies in its simplicity. Built around a vintage Stratocaster and bass, the arrangement has an immediacy that more elaborate production might have obscured. Ines kept the very first guitar take, played on his ’50s Stratocaster using a capo and the neck pickup, trusting the instinctive quality of that initial performance rather than pursuing a technically polished alternative. The bass, played on his wife’s Rogue, brings its own character to the song and reflects a period in which he was beginning to understand the instrument as something more than a means of reinforcing the guitar.
There is no need for a conventional drum part or a towering wall of sound. Instead, the instruments occupy a space that feels almost domestic, as though the listener has arrived in a room where the song is unfolding in real time. A vinyl effect at the beginning creates the impression of tuning into a radio station just as the music starts, a small production detail that establishes the atmosphere without drawing attention away from the performance. It is an inviting introduction to a song whose emotional subject matter is considerably more complicated than its modest arrangement might initially suggest.
That contrast is central to the track’s appeal. Ines is more interested in the lasting effects of broken trust, and in the slow, often difficult process of understanding how those experiences have shaped the person he has become. The song draws on his experiences of relationships, people and institutions that have failed to live up to the trust he placed in them, including events that began early in his life and influenced how he came to understand the world around him.
Yet this is not simply a song about disappointment. Its deeper concern is what happens after the initial hurt, when the immediate crisis has passed but the consequences remain. How do you rebuild your sense of security? How do you learn to trust again without ignoring what experience has taught you? And how do you move forward when the person you become in the process is inevitably different from the person you were before?
Ines approaches these questions with a refreshing lack of sentimentality. Healing is not presented as a neat return to the way things were, nor does the song suggest that difficult experiences can simply be erased. Sometimes the pieces do not fit together as they once did. You have to find a different way of putting them together, accepting that change is part of the process rather than evidence that something has been lost forever.
The decision to revisit “Damages” also gives the song an interesting second life. Restoring the backing vocals and harmonies has allowed Ines to hear the track closer to the way he originally imagined it, but the process is about more than correcting the limitations of an earlier recording. It is also an opportunity to reconsider a deeply personal piece of work from a different point in his life. The song remains connected to the experiences that inspired it, but the perspective surrounding those experiences has evolved.
Ultimately, “Damages” is about acknowledging what has happened without surrendering the future to it. The title might suggest something broken beyond repair, but the song arrives at a more complicated and ultimately hopeful understanding. Damage can leave its mark. It can alter the way we see ourselves, the people around us and the possibilities ahead. But it does not have to determine the outcome.
Sometimes moving forwards means accepting that you will never be quite the same person again. “Damages” understands that, and finds something quietly powerful in the realisation that this need not be a bad thing.
Keep up with everything Animals In Denial on the Website
For Brooks John Martin, a song can begin with a guitar part and end up somewhere entirely unexpected. On his new single, “Ocean Breathes Salty“, the wave-like arpeggios of Mark Kozelek’s interpretation of the Modest Mouse original sparked an image of a windswept beach and an ash spreading ceremony, a scene that would eventually become the inspiration for the song’s accompanying video. Featuring Nashville singer-songwriter Lilly Hiatt, Martin’s version adds drums, bass and strings to create a melancholic, cinematic duet that honours the spirit of Kozelek’s arrangement.
The single offers a glimpse into the imaginative world of War All The Time, Martin’s forthcoming album and the first release to emerge from an extraordinary burst of songwriting that followed a period when he thought his musical journey might be over.
Blending the rootsy warmth of 1970s Laurel Canyon with orchestral arrangements, alternative rock and his own richly expressive baritone, Martin has created a collection shaped by musical curiosity and a gift for turning sounds into stories. We caught up with him to discuss the influence behind “Ocean Breathes Salty”, the making of its North Carolina beach video, and the creative resurgence that brought War All The Time into being.
Tell us the story of this song, why did you choose to visualize the song specifically in this way?
The song was originally written by Modest Mouse and Mark Kozalek reimagined the song with Sun Kil Moon. I always loved his arrangement and wanted to put my own spin on it. I added drums, bass, strings and sung it as a duet. I imagined the imagery of the song being on a beach at an ash spreading ceremony and the video made that a reality.
What was the inspiration behind this video? (visual, storyline, etc.)?
The inspiration for the song imagery was the guitar arpeggios Mark Kozalek came up with. They felt wave like to me and made me feel the sad beach vibe. The lyrics fit the imagery perfectly.
What was the process of making this video?
I had a preproduction meeting with Scotty Felix and we had to choose California or North Carolina to shoot. We decided on NC because it would be less crowded and I liked the dunes scenery. We flew everyone down and filmed it in one day on Oak Island. Had some great food and met some great people. Very nice part of the country.
Keep up with everything Brooks John Martin on his Website
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