What if we live in a dystopian mirror?
The apocalypse has long been pictured as something cinematic: ash falling from the sky, skyscrapers reduced to skeletons, nature swallowing concrete. Yet what if the end of the world didn’t arrive with a bang, but with quiet indifference? What if it is not a future event but a process already in motion? South London duo ColourTelly tackle precisely this question in their stunning new album, “It’s All Mad Out Here.” For them, the apocalypse isn’t an explosion but a slow disconnection, a collective burnout masked by digital brightness. Nuclear fear, AI anxiety, climate collapse and social alienation are no longer separate threats; they have merged into one numbing condition. The duo sees this as the true end: a loss of empathy, a dulling of what makes us human. “Everybody’s heads down like they can’t see the sky,” Cunningham sings on “Franks”, her voice threading through a beat that feels half dream, half confession. It captures both the posture of a phone-lit generation and the emptiness it hides. In another song, “Mr. Lovejet”, she adds: “Always looking for love ’cause something’s missing.” It is the echo of an age searching for touch through screens.
The album’s soundscape reflects that tension between human warmth and technological decay. It is an unfiltered blend of jazz, hip hop and trip-hop textures, a modern analogue to Portishead’s melancholy and Radiohead’s digital paranoia. But unlike their predecessors, ColourTelly build their world not in abstract dread but in lived experience. Recorded across South London’s streets using binaural microphones, “It’s All Mad Out Here” carries the hum of sirens, the murmur of late-night traffic and the fatigue of a city that never quite recovers. The decision to work almost entirely with hardware gives the record a tactile intimacy. The hiss, the crackle, the subtle imperfections of old machines all serve a purpose: they make the digital feel haunted by the physical.
What distinguishes ColourTelly’s vision is how ordinary it makes catastrophe sound. “Living in the City” isn’t just about urban decay but about normalising chaos, how sirens become background noise, how fear becomes habit. “Don’t Look Down” feels like both a warning and an acceptance, a reminder that collapse does not happen overnight but seeps in, pixel by pixel, update by update. The album’s title, repeated like a resigned mantra, becomes less a statement of surprise and more of recognition. This is what madness looks like when it becomes the norm.
Yet beneath the bleakness lies an unexpected tenderness. ColourTelly aren’t simply documenting the fall; they are searching for a way out. Their lyrics speak of love, faith and the possibility of renewal, even if it is only spiritual. “Closure in death seems a bit mean to me,” Cunningham sings softly, “become one with the stars, I pray for another life, a second chance to do right.” “It’s All Mad Out Here” resonates because it does not offer a theory or warning. It captures the texture of our time: exhaustion, craving for feeling, the absurdity of trying to stay human in systems built to erase that very thing. In ColourTelly’s world, the apocalypse is not the loss of the planet but the loss of presence. Yet their music, in its raw honesty and refusal to look away, becomes a quiet act of resistance, a reminder that even at the end of the world we still have the capacity to feel.