Sunset or Sunrise

I’ve been thinking. 

We are absurd to ourselves in the game of love.

We can never fully know our lover’s experience; so we interpret. We analyse their gestures like critics reviewing a play. And in response, we step onto the stage ourselves, presenting some polished, projected version of who we hope they might love.

A romantic lead.

A curated self.

A mask with good lighting.

But the truth of who we are lives in flux. It shifts. It contradicts yesterday. The idea that we could carve a fixed, marble version of ourselves and call it authentic is instantly ridiculous. Our desires change. Our fears change. Our tenderness changes. We are far more fluid than the roles we audition for.

And so we end up trapped in mirrors.

Our attraction casts  it’s light, but all light throws its shadows. Those shadows dance with our fears on the walls of our being. And our lovers? They’re dancing with their own shadows in the same masquerade ball. Two silhouettes waltzing alone together, oblivious to the ancient driving genes and sympathetic strings bowed by unseen impulses. A mystery for desire to untangle whilst getting itself completely entangled.

We ache to be loved for who we are, yet perform for who we imagine the other expects. No wonder we sometimes feel undernourished. It’s like craving sugar and being handed saccharine.

The same pattern plays out in crowds. We long to dissolve into something bigger; a tribe, a movement, or a leader.  We trade complexity for certainty, freedom for the promise of safety. But flattening ourselves never truly protects us. Death and chaos find us wherever we hide.

And then there’s the theatre of social media; curated selves crying out for oxytocin while dopamine burns out in endless scroll.

So what hope is there?

Perhaps it’s this: to risk the unscripted self. To celebrate difference rather than fear it. To step out of the mirror and into the moment. To lose ourselves; not in performance, but in music, in movement, in a dance of something real.

Sunset or Sunrise lives in that in-between space.

Is this the end of something?

Or the beginning?

The light looks similar both ends of night in the softer hues of sunset and sunrise. 

FOR RELEASE

“Sunset or Sunrise” – Andy Jans-Brown & Cameron Spike-Porter

Single & film clip out Monday, March 2

Sunset or Sunrise is the second single and film clip from the forthcoming album Airport

Departure Lounge; a propulsive indie-rock track that races forward like a fast train running

straight through the heart of the listener. It asks a simple question: are we heading for a

crash, the start of something new, or somehow both? Should we run, or should we dance?

The song surges with urgency, yet the vocal delivery remains restrained and sombre, creating a tension between motion and emotion.

The days feel long, but a lifetime passes in a blink.

With Sunset or Sunrise, Jans-Brown once again stretches the frame of the three-minute pop

song, smuggling big ideas into a fast, hook-driven form. Beneath the rush lies a deeper

exploration of love, identity, and the uneasy space between who we are and who we perform

ourselves to be for lovers, for crowds, for the promise of belonging. The song circles the

absurdity of wanting to be loved “for who we are,” while simultaneously shaping ourselves to

meet the expectations of others.

That same tension plays out in the accompanying film clip, a darkly comic allegory set at a

beachside dinner table at sunset. Jans-Brown sings directly to camera while friends around

him laugh, drink, and enjoy themselves. A dishevelled waiter, played by Spike-Porter,

becomes increasingly rude, intrusive, and unhinged, disrupting the gathering as tensions rise

and the scene collapses into chaos; a pointed mirror to the social fragmentation and finger-

pointing of our current political moment. By the final chorus, Jans-Brown becomes both

witness and scapegoat, the silent observer who absorbs the fallout, covered in food like a

Jackson Pollock canvas as the song reaches its crescendo.

In keeping with the broader themes of Airport Departure Lounge, Sunset or Sunrise inhabits

that same liminal space beneath harsh fluorescent lights; a waiting room between endings and beginnings, where reflection is unavoidable and certainty is impossible. The song leaves its central question unresolved, capturing the feeling of standing at a threshold, unsure whether what lies ahead is nightfall or dawn.

The album was mixed by Cameron Spike-Porter and mastered by Jordan Power.

“Some albums aren’t just listen to, they’re inhabited” CR Indie

“Powerful, atmospheric and memorable Indie Rock” Stuart Coupe