“I only care about one thing, and that’s being in love.”
Where many artists sand down their edges with success, Mareux (Aryan Ashtiani) drags a razor across the mirror. Nonstop Romance, his second album, veers away from the sleek, satin-soaked corridors of darkwave and goth-pop that first lit his path. Instead, he offers something raw and unruly: a love letter left to rot in the rain, gushing, torn, yet painfully sincere.
Out June 27th via Revolution/Warner Records, Nonstop Romance unveils its first true heartbreak hymn with Laugh Now Cry Later. The track leans hard into the brutal cycle of embrace and abandonment, warmth and wreckage. Mareux trades polish for pain, gloss for guts, pulling listeners into a space where bruises are pressed just to prove they still feel. Laugh Now Cry Later is a hymn for those who cling to fleeting comfort, knowing it will sour, yet stepping into it anyway. There’s a strange, bitter grace in laughing through the slow collapse.
“I started writing this song way back in 2018 and it’s gone through several evolutions since then,” he reflects. “At the time, I was coming off of a bad relationship and was feeling bitter. I brought it back recently, not inspired by my own misfortunes, but those of some of my friends. This song is a standout on the album, not because it’s better than the other songs, but because it’s the saddest song on it.”
Listen below:
“I’m trying to make something that’s reflective of me getting older,” Mareux says of Nonstop Romance.
While this sentiment usually signals a slide into safe, hushed territory, Nonstop Romance smirks at the very idea. Here, adulthood is less a meditation than a dare: can you keep the chaos fun without killing the mood? That simple, slippery question shaped the album’s pulse.
Across Nonstop Romance, Mareux sets his songs like Venus flytraps: thick with romance, thrumming with low-end beats, yet always backlit in a sinister, seedy red. Pleasure here comes with its teeth bared. The tension between the album’s sweaty allure and the quiet threat that simmers beneath defines its world: sleek on the surface, unsettling underneath.
Recording the album in his bedroom in Los Angeles’ Lincoln Heights, Mareux built a private cinema of mute provocation. An old CRT TV buzzed in the corner, screening everything from Tarkovsky’s slow-burn mysticism and Jodorowsky’s fevered dream-logic to Hype Williams’ hyper-saturated Belly. Sound stripped away; only mood remained: looming, luminous, and loaded.
“I’ve noticed that as artists get better or more seasoned, they go for a more polished, studio sound and lose their grit,” Mareux says. “I like when music sounds like found footage.”
Listen to Laugh Now Cry Later below, or on your choice of streaming here. Pre-save Nonstop Romance here.
Mareux will be performing at Cruel World Festival on May 17th in Pasadena.
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