I’m dying
In your Subterranean World
Geranium eye
Kiss of the poison flower
There are dreams in which we run from monsters, and others in which the monster is time itself. You move through a room of people arrested between gestures, mouths open around unfinished words, hands suspended above tables, faces fixed by some invisible Mombi whose spell has spared only you. At first, there is curiosity. Then comes the dreadful privilege of observation. You notice how strange a human being becomes when deprived of motion, how life resides in the smallest continuation. And as you weave among them, one thought follows closely behind: perhaps they are not frozen. Perhaps you are passing.
Los Angeles artist Blone Noble has spent 2026 behaving as though settling on one particular musical identity might constitute a misdemeanor. After May’s Dominator EP pushed New Beat, industrial, and Italo into the club, the eerie Subterranean World, co-written and produced by Dakota Blue, takes the stranger route: down the trapdoor, past the plumbing, and into an underworld where romance has acquired pincers.
Noble describes the collaboration, though the music suggests dangerous laboratory conditions:
“Dakota Blue and I have been working in the shadows for some time now, developing a new musical language in his Pasadena studio; a neo-futuristic art rock record built on primal rhythms, eastern synths, fretless wanderings and LA noir poetry. We wrote and recorded Subterranean World in our first session together.”
That Mick Karn fixation makes itself known through Blue’s fretless bass, which prowls rather than anchors, carrying echoes of Dali’s Car, Japan, Bryan Ferry’s Bête Noire, and Talk Talk’s The Colour Of Spring without turning the song into a museum tour. Noble’s droning vocal inhabits the music with the calm of somebody describing his poisoning while deciding the flowers were worth it.
The lyrics take erotic obsession underground, where devotion means accepting humiliation, death, poverty, insects, occult initiation, and whatever other indignities love has stored in the basement. Romance has rarely sounded so eager to be eaten alive.
Director Redamo Rosa gives that delirium an unnerving visual form. His camera passes through bizarre tableaux populated by people frozen, as though Medusa had wandered through a Twilight Zone episode and decided everyone needed to hold still for continuity. Bodies become mannequins, gestures hang unfinished, and rooms acquire the logic of a bad dream you understand until breakfast.
“I had this idea to have a camera move through dreams, almost like walking through a museum or diorama of a reality, only this reality is slightly bent,” Rosa explains. “I didn’t want there to be any reason behind the visuals, but I wanted the audience to feel disoriented by what they’re seeing. Often, we find deep meaning in inexplicable dreams. I approached Blone Noble with the idea, and he played Subterranean World for me. The song captured that feeling I was chasing – it played like narration to a nightmare and felt like it was about the darkest parts of humanity.”
The result feels deliciously wrong, a surreal dip in the darkest shadows of our psyches, where everybody else has stopped moving and the camera, cursed with consciousness, keeps going.
Watch the video for Subterranean World below:
Listen to Subterranean World below and purchase the single here.
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