I’m not like you
I could never be like you
I spent a long time learning how to pretend
It’s exhausting
British electronic provocateur Max Rael plunges headlong into poignant minimalist synth paranoia with his majestic new single, Slightly Less Than Human, the shadow-streaked second taste from his forthcoming debut The Enemy Is Us, set for release June 20 via London’s Liquid Len Recording Company.
A polymath powerhouse: musician, actor, engineer, writer, producer – Rael boasts a bold CV featuring remixes for Fish (Marillion), Last July, Kommand + Kontrol, Bienheldenschafgegenstand, and Freudstein. He’s equally infamous as the mastermind behind electro-goth insurgents History of Guns.
With twitchy textures and seductive synth hooks underpinning a brooding, spoken vocal delivery, Slightly Less Than Human channels literary echoes from Japanese author Osamu Dazai. The lyrics dissect raw isolation, the anxious ache of impostor imitation, and an unsettling suspicion: a lingering feeling that difference is something innate, irreparable, and irreversibly other. Channeling Coil, Anne Clark, and Gary Numan, the eerie, icy synths are a jarring juxtaposition to Rael’s gentle voice. There is no drama, no theatrics…just a simple connection.
“This is a song about not feeling like a proper person, feeling slightly less than human,” says Rael. “I was always one of those kids who felt very different and alien from everyone else, patiently waiting for the spaceship to finally arrive and take me home to my people. The lyrics have taken on a deeper significance for me personally since being diagnosed with Autistic Spectrum Disorder after they were written, which has given me a new context for some of the struggles I’ve had with life.”
The video for Slightly Less Than Human dispenses with spectacle in favour of stark intensity. Rael. ghostly in pallid makeup. splinters across the screen, a chorus of selves layered and looped, confronting the lens with a cool, unnerving directness. It’s less performance than possession: he doesn’t simply sing the song, he becomes its echo: alien, uncanny, and uncomfortably close.
“In keeping with the first video, I’ve decided not to use AI, CGI, filters etc. and filmed all the lighting effects live in the room. It’s not that I’m particularly anti-AI. I’ve used it in the past. More that it just felt a good time to put it down for a while and do a project without it.”
Rael’s imminent 12-track record, self-produced with mixing by Caden Clarkson and mastered by Pete Maher (U2, Nick Cave, Depeche Mode, Pixies, Nine Inch Nails), promises a potent blend of electronic experimentation, stark spoken word, and relentless rhythms. Confronting identity, reality, and existential anxiety, Max Rael emerges as a restless explorer of psyche and philosophy, reflecting humanity’s fractured face back at itself.
Listen to Slightly Less Than Human below, and order the single here. The Enemy Is Us will be released on June 20 via Liquid Len Recording Company.
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