Brisbane-based artist ÚMBRIEL's newest release, 'Dead To You', is gorgeous art-pop melded to an orchestral new-wave spirit that'll bury itself deep in your emotional core.
The moniker of James Halloran, ÚMBRIEL is an artist merging industrial textures with poetic storytelling, weaving vast soundscapes to create unworldly tones that are both intimate and sparse.
A song whose lyrics morphed over time, 'Dead To You' became an ode to a departed friend whose own battles birthed a revenge song.
A hauntingly hypnotic, delicate piano serenades James' soothing, deep-toned vocals that provide a spellbinding hush before the song slowly uncoils, picking up speed with a delicious rhythm that devilishly dances into electro-pop territory, James' voice gaining a serene authority.
As the song enters its last third, an industrial rave breaks out, the sonic textures spiralling into murky depths, yet remaining buoyant, almost heavenly in its essence.
It's gloomy and fatalistic yet layered in a stylised, gleaming electronic beat that sprinkles hope and nurtures a sense of revival.
Ahead of the song's release tomorrow, scenestr is thrilled to premiere 'Dead To You'. Enjoy.
"I wrote 'Dead To You' while living with my beautiful friend Tash, the first person to hear this song in its earliest form," James says.
"She was a brilliant scientist and artist who spent her days working on how to 3D print human brain tissue and her nights sewing drag costumes. She was an enigma; an incredible friend with a witchy curiosity and a love for cats above all else.
"She was also someone navigating the kinds of pressures that often remain invisible: sexual violence, eating disorders, and severe depression. After she took her life, this song took on a totally different meaning to me. It became the revenge story she never got to live.
"In the song's narrative, a woman who survived violence and violation enacts a dark revenge myth: the symbolic destruction of a man who stands in for the forces that harmed her.
"The opening lyric comes directly from something she once said; arousing from her slumber one morning adorned in emerald jewellery and the residue of the joint she had fallen asleep smoking the night before: 'Last night I slept in jewellery, now in ash.'"
The second single (or 'sign' as James puts it) from ÚMBRIEL's forthcoming debut album 'The Signs', a decade-spanning project exploring grief, spiritual crisis, and the symbolic objects that hold the emotional charge of our lives.
"'Dead To You' depicts ÚMBRIEL as a modern Icarus, a being born of celestial light who falls into human reality," James says.
"As this being descends through mythic realms, pieces of memory are found like debris, becoming 'the signs' themselves: the small ordinary objects through which meaning survives.
"This mythology becomes a metaphor for queerness, grief and the process of becoming truly human. It reflects how the things that break us often awaken us to truth, connection and selfhood.
"Through music, image and performance, 'The Signs' becomes a dream opera of the unconscious, a cycle of disintegration and transcendence that suggests to fall is to become real. This song opens the album, a sort of prologue for what's to come."
The recording sessions for 'The Signs' also acted as a mini retreat of sorts, with ÚMBRIEL teaming again with longtime collaborator, producer Nick O'Donnell.
"The band went away for a weekend at an Airbnb in Maleny where we worked during the day, collaborating to find the production blend that works for us. We always work with Nick O'Donnell, who really is integral to our specific sound.
"The songs were mostly all written, but the production element is where they come to life. Due to the way I play piano and the kinds of chordal harmony I use, sometimes the writing can feel a little 'theatre-y', so we work on finding the sweet spot where those theatrical quirks meet the dense, raw industrial underpinnings of artists like Depeche Mode, Placebo, or Björk.
"After we finished for the day, we would eat an excessive amount of cheese, indulge in a little edible, prescribed, of course, and have dance parties to CHARLI XCX.
"As we recorded this album the week after 'Brat' came out, I like to think in some way that influenced our 'crying on the dance floor’ aesthetic on this album."
Still recovering from vocal fold surgery, ÚMBRIEL hopes to tour later in 2026.
