Shall I stroke your fragile ego?
Gotta make myself so small for you
A little authority in a small music scene can do remarkable things to a person’s sense of proportion. A few contacts become a private kingdom, attention becomes a favour, and everyone else is expected to shrink until the room belongs to one magnificently inflated ego. London/Brighton duo IARA NAGA have apparently run out of patience with this particular species.
Comprising producers Shonalika and Danny Sanchez, the pair unveil the video for their debut single Big Fish. Released on October 22, 2026, through Gasolina Recordings, the track takes aim at the abuse of power within niche communities, where supposed solidarity can become a convenient cover for somebody’s considerable appetite for control.
A jackhammer drumbeat opens proceedings, accompanied by bass-heavy synth waves that buck and warble around the rhythm. Old-school Ministry and Nine Inch Nails offer useful points of reference, while the production brings that industrial attack into contact with contemporary darkwave. An anxious bounce runs through the percussion and electronics, suggesting a stray mid-1990s alternative single passed between an industrial club and an adventurous radio programmer. Everything stays lean enough for each accusation to land.
The vocal sits somewhere between Shirley Manson’s caustic poise and Justine Frischmann’s conversational bite, delivered with a sneer so dry it could strip the paint from a dressing-room door. Distortion roughens the refrain, giving its wounded accusation an agitated edge as the beat keeps pressing forward. The words fit tightly against that rhythm, turning resentment into something sharply articulated and perversely catchy.
The lyrics pick apart the small humiliations that keep a scene hierarchy intact: flattering a fragile ego, shrinking yourself to preserve somebody else’s importance, and being expected to feel grateful for scraps of attention. The person causing the hurt claims the injured party’s role, shifting blame onto whoever has absorbed their behaviour. Painful truths are buried to preserve the group’s good time, while walking away becomes the clearest escape from an arrangement designed to make one person lose.
The video gives that inflated ego suitably extravagant accommodation. Red walls, heavy curtains, an ornate gold mirror, and a lavish bed surround a heavily made-up figure whose attention moves between their own reflection and a phone screen. Fishnet, leather, elaborate cosmetics, and bedside encounters turn the room into a little court of appearances, with social-media posts intruding on the action. Elsewhere, two elaborately dressed characters compare messages and comfort one another.
A public apology delivers the ugliest punchline: an announcement of accountability swiftly turns into an account of the writer’s own suffering and personal growth. The person supposedly accepting responsibility remains, unmistakably, at the centre of the frame. Against this bedroom drama, IARA NAGA performs before a bare white-brick wall, their movements casting vast silhouettes across it. When the figure from the red room finally curls onto the floor, the song’s portrait of fragile authority finds its starkly literal form.
Watch the video for Big Fish below:
Formed in the summer of 2026 following the end of Death Drive, IARA NAGA takes its name from shape-shifting figures in Indian and Brazilian folklore, reflecting the producers’ respective heritages. Moving through synthpop, punk, darkwave, percussive industrial, and EBM, the project probes identity, marginalisation, and corruption. Urban decay, neo-noir, magical realism, and survival shape its world.
Big Fish was produced by IARA NAGA and mixed by Jack Milwaukee (M!R!M).
Listen to Big Fish below, and order the single here. Find it on streaming here.
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