Dystopian duo DOPAMINE FIX release second single 'REAL'
- Richard Blowes
- 2 days ago
- 2 min read
With their second single, DOPAMINE FIX continue to question what a post truth world means as they ask what is REAL via the medium of post punk pop
Track: REAL
Band: DOPAMINE FIX
Released: March 2 2026
DOPAMINE FIX continue their exploration of what it means to inhabit the dark post-truth world we have been dumped in with their second single REAL.
Whereas their debut single Welcome To The Sharktank exposed the machinery and the threat, REAL speaks from inside the aftermath — after the damage, after the noise, when certainty has begun to fail.
Set to an electro pop backing, the sound is a throwback to a time when pop music didn't necessarily mean produced-for-the-chart music. Intelligent lyrics set to a stylish, noirish dancefloor ready beat. Think Talk Talk via Pet Shop Boys filtered through a Bowie Berlin era lens.
The track evokes the paranoia of Soviet era East European surveillance and threat of nuclear annihilation and whether an individual matters anymore. DOPAMINE FIX style the track as a broadcast, maybe transmitted from the last outpost of truth:
This is a message.
If you are hearing it, you are still listening.
In a world shaped by artificial intelligence, disinformation and continuous media manipulation, perception is no longer shared. Images persuade. Narratives overwrite memory. Reality becomes something assigned rather than lived.
A question repeats throughout the signal:
I can’t feel what you feel — how do we know one of us is real?
It is not a lyric. It is a test.
REAL documents the internal state of this condition: emotional numbness, isolation, the sense of watching life through glass. Connection persists, but without proof. Presence remains, but without confirmation.
Welcome To The Sharktank described the system, REAL describes what the system leaves behind.
If this message resonates, you are not alone.
If it doesn’t, that may already be the point.
REAL was recorded between Berlin, Coventry and Limerick and produced and engineered by Mick Heffernan (Gavin Friday, Howie B and Richard Russell). It features additional guitars from David Meagher from Sons Of Southern Ulster.
There are still a few copies of debut single Welcome To The Sharktank on 7" red vinyl. The incorruptible truth.
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