After more than eight years away from full-length releases, Los Angeles–based duo Siren Section return with Separation Team, a meticulously constructed and emotionally dense album that rewards patience, immersion, and close listening. Written and produced over four years, the record stands as both a continuation and a refinement of the band’s long-evolving language—one built from post-punk tension, shoegaze haze, and glitch-driven electronics.
Comprised of James Cumberland and John Dowling, Siren Section approach sound less as spectacle and more as environment. Their self-described “glitchgaze” aesthetic treats distortion as atmosphere rather than aggression, allowing layers of guitars, synths, and fractured rhythms to blur into something hypnotic and quietly overwhelming. The result is an album that feels suspended in motion—always shifting, rarely resolving. Separation Team unfolds as a concept record designed to be experienced as a whole. From the opening track “Construct”, the album establishes a mood of fractured systems and emotional unease, carried forward through pulsing tracks like “Bullet Train” and “Solidarity.” Songs don’t rush toward payoff; instead, they accumulate weight through repetition, tension, and subtle transformation. Mid-album highlights such as “Medicine,” “Flinch,” and “They Will Never Find Us” balance vulnerability with restraint, pairing melodic clarity against walls of texture and glitch. There’s a recurring sense of retreat and exposure happening simultaneously—music that feels withdrawn yet confessional, intimate yet obscured. Tracks like “Dangerous to Know” and the paired “Tritagonist” pieces deepen the album’s psychological framing, reinforcing its themes of identity, collapse, and quiet resistance.
Later tracks, including “Minotaur,” “Glass Cannon,” and “Timeghost,” lean further into abstraction without losing emotional grounding. The closing stretch—from “Equilibrium” through “Carry Through” and “Five Fifty Five”—feels deliberate and ritualistic, as if the album is slowly exhaling after prolonged tension. Nothing here feels accidental; every sound appears placed with intention. What makes Separation Team compelling is its refusal to simplify its emotional terrain. The album explores existential sadness, vulnerability, and systems breaking down—personal, emotional, technological—without offering neat conclusions. Instead, it invites listeners to sit with discomfort, to find familiarity inside disorientation. As their first full-length release in nearly a decade, Separation Team doesn’t attempt a comeback narrative. It feels more like a document of sustained focus—two collaborators refining a shared language over time. Dense, immersive, and quietly affecting, the album confirms Siren Section as artists committed not to immediacy, but to depth. This is a record that doesn’t ask to be skimmed. It asks to be entered.
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