I see it, feel it closing in.
I see it, feel it closing in.
Time check and write it down again.
There is something unnervingly lucid about Alarmist, the new single from Midniter, the latest incarnation of Charlotte musician Nic Pugh. Beneath its dark pop and indie electronics lies a voice broadcasting from the heart of a fevered empire, observing the moral corrosion of a society devouring itself through screens and slogans.
Pugh has spent two decades traversing punk basements and dive bars, most notably with Paint Fumes and Jaggermouth. Midniter, conceived in January 2024, channels that itinerant experience into a new apparatus, one that replaces distortion with pulse, and rebellion with observation. The machinery hums; the human condition, it seems, is still malfunctioning.
“I wrote Alarmist in January, around the inauguration of Donald Trump as President for his second time,” says Pugh. “It doesn’t take much detective work to connect it to the lyrics. My anxiety was through the roof at that time, and I know most people in my community – whether it be the LGBTQ or local creative community – felt similar, if not the same. The opening lines are a true testament to that anxious, almost claustrophobic feeling.”
The track captures that tightening grip. Synths pulse like warning sirens. The rhythm feels less like movement than containment; a measured suffocation. There’s an elegance to its unease, a precision that turns despair into design. It’s the language of alarms, where beauty and panic share the same register.
The accompanying video, directed and edited by Yawn Productions, moves between jailhouse brutality and ritualistic zeal, before collapsing into the vivid psychedelic animation of Mexican artist Arturo Baston. The interplay between reality and the surreal evokes the narrative dislocation of Pink Floyd’s The Wall, where confinement and imagination intertwine to expose society’s psychic fractures.
“…I wanted the imagery to reflect a bit of what’s currently happening here in the States,” says Pugh. “I think our current immigration policy operating under the aggression of ICE is absolutely deplorable. Not only is it inhumane, it also feels hypocritical and cultish, along with this ‘pick and choose what suits me’ kind of Christian ideology that backs it. There are pieces of those ideas throughout the video that I feel match the suspense and urgency of the song itself.”
Watch the video for “Alarmist” below:
Alarmist stands as both lament and diagnosis, a chronicle of systems gone feral and of those still trying to breathe within them. It is art as resistance, anxiety rendered audible, and faith dissected under fluorescent light.
Alarmist is out now via SugarTank! Records. Listen below:
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