"Glitchgaze" is a space between dreamscape and distortion: Siren Section

For Siren Section, “glitch” isn’t simply texture and embellishment, it’s a way of thinking about memory, emotion, and reconstruction. It carries a certain sadness. Drawing from industrial roots, shoegaze atmosphere, and years of collaboration, the duo create music that balances massive walls of sound with moments that feel strangely intimate. In this interview, they unpack how that blend took shape and why tension — more than polish — keeps the music alive.

1. What’s the story behind the name Siren Section?

Siren Section began as a reference to James Joyce’s Ulysses. We’re both literature dorks, so that felt fitting right away. But beyond the reference, I really liked the underlying idea — the beautiful things that lead us astray. That tension between attraction and danger, comfort and consequence, is something we keep circling back to in the music.

2. Tell us a bit about how Siren Section came together. How did it all start?

John and I met in high school and bonded over trading music — literally trading CDs, or burning CDRs once that became possible. We came from pretty different musical worlds: I was deep into industrial and electronic music, while he was pulling me into punk, hardcore, and heavier guitar-driven stuff. Where we really overlapped was shoegaze and atmospheric music.

In 2001, we formed a band called JINSAI, a four-piece experimental, noise-leaning, art-pop, jazz-adjacent project that ran for about a decade and produced a couple of albums. When that band eventually drifted apart, John and I naturally gravitated back toward working together. The name Siren Section had already existed — it was actually a lyric in an old JINSAI song — so reforming as a duo under that banner felt like a continuation rather than a restart.

3. Your sound has been described as “glitchgaze,” a space between dreamscape and distortion. How do you find the right balance within that blend?

We’re mostly just pulling from our favorite parts of the music we love and figuring out how they can coexist without stepping on each other. We’re very drawn to loud-quiet-loud dynamics, huge anticipation, and massive walls of distortion — but I’ve always liked treating fuzz almost like an ambient pad, then driving it forward with glitchy electronic percussion.

Medicine is a bit of an outlier in that sense, since it leans more heavily on acoustic drums, but even there you can hear the post-punk, electronic framework underneath. That tension — organic versus synthetic — is a guiding principle for us, and we’re always shifting the goalposts to keep it interesting.

4. The “glitch” element seems to be a core part of Siren Section’s identity. What does that motif mean to you?

Visually, glitches carry a kind of sadness to me — like abused memory, broken and obscured. In the music, breaking things apart and reconstructing them has always been central to what we do, going all the way back to JINSAI and our industrial roots.

We loved bands like Einstürzende Neubauten, but almost in reverse — not tearing buildings down, but repairing burnt-out structures. Rhythmically, the swing lives in the glitch for us. It’s the nudge and drift that gives the music its feel. If a track is processing unsettled emotions, the beat might juggle itself in a disorienting, shattered way, and then repairing it becomes part of the composition — like chiseling away at a sculpture in reverse.

There’s probably a simpler explanation somewhere in there about mystery, scrambled signals, and the separation of signal from noise… or maybe that’s not simpler at all.

5. Is “glitchgaze” a challenging genre to perform live?

We’ve taken a lot of different approaches to live performance over the years, and it’s always been unconventional. With JINSAI as a four-piece band, the shows leaned more toward chaotic rock energy — our bass player was deeply into prog and metal and loved to fully unleash onstage.

With Siren Section, the live show is more channeled and hypnotic. The goal is to draw people in visually and sonically, almost trance-like… and then hit them with something physical.

Technically, we don’t have a live drummer, which surprises people. Everything runs off a master clock that sends a kick signal through the electronics, bass, and even parts of my guitar rig. I use an Omnichord and pedals to build walls of ambience that breathe with the pulse, while John can lock into that clocked signal or break away from it to perform outside the grid. It sounds complicated, but at its core it’s just a tightly connected system — basically a computer in a box, a projector, and some cables. Mostly.

6. Medicine feels both heavy and healing. Where did that emotional push and pull come from?

We’re really drawn to paradoxical emotions. There’s something beautiful about placing something comforting inside something sad. Giant, triumphant walls of distortion can actually feel incredibly calming.

Structurally, Medicine starts as a march — predictable, logical — and the lyrics even spell that out: “of course you’re right to expect a logical sequence to your life.” Then the “medicine” arrives and the song blows itself apart. There’s a kind of crisis, followed by rebuilding from nothing. The repetition of the word medicine becomes hopeful, and the ending could be read as euphoria, meditation, reconciliation — whatever the listener needs it to be to close the loop.

7. Was there a specific moment that unlocked the whole track while creating Medicine?

The song goes back quite a while — John originally tracked a demo version six or more years ago. From the beginning, it revolved around overcoming things, whatever those things might be. Guarding ourselves, protecting our hurt, avoiding vulnerability.

But vulnerability is where connection lives. Love makes you vulnerable. Healing requires vulnerability. In that sense, medicine might simply be the willingness to be damaged and open at the same time.

8. The production on Medicine feels incredibly textured. What was the most unconventional technique you used?

At one point we had just walls upon walls of tracked guitars — an almost comical amount. Then it became this cycle of programming drums, tearing them apart, making things bigger, quieter, stranger. Eventually the track turned into something monstrous and intimidating, especially in the heavy section.

That’s a place we like to reach — where the song is almost too much, barely holding together. The challenge became “make it bigger but keep it pretty.” I built synth arpeggios underneath the distortion, and eventually we hit this razor-thin feedback point where adding even a little more would collapse the whole thing. When you find that moment, it’s thrilling. It’s like hearing the kick drum phase lock when you’re beat-matching — suddenly everything clicks.

9. When you revisit your earlier work, what stands out as the biggest change?

Our early work was ambitious, but it needed containment. There are moments that feel accidentally brilliant in hindsight — things we didn’t even recognize at the time. That’s endearing, especially listening back to music we made in our twenties.

The first Siren Section album from 2014, All We Want All At Once, has aged particularly well for me. I can finally hear it as a listener rather than a creator, and it feels more cohesive now than it did when we made it. At the same time, it’s clear how different we are now — more confident operating in this genre-agnostic space, still wandering through a minefield, but doing it with intention.

10. Looking ahead, what’s something you’re excited about?

This year feels significant because we’re finally releasing Separation Team. Finishing it feels like an accomplishment in itself — it took longer than it probably should have, but we packed an entire world into it. If you dig, you’ll find things hidden away at every depth. No matter how far you go, there’s always more down there.

There’s a quiet push and pull at the heart of Siren Section; beauty inside heaviness, structure giving way to something more instinctive. Their songs don’t resolve so much as unfold, leaving space for the listener to find their own meaning in the static.

Listen to “Medicine” here: