AS Fanning – ‘Take Me Back to Nowhere’ album review: dancing to the end of doom

Name: AS Fanning - Take Me Back to Nowhere
Rating: 4

Tom Taylor

Tue 10 February 2026 11:07, UK

AS Fanning - 'Take Me Back to Nowhere'

Irish singer-songwriter AS Fanning is back with his fourth album, Take Me Back to Nowhere. Still based in Berlin, he dredges up the city’s synths and oscillators for a record that dances through technofuedalism right to the end of doom.

The Skinny: When discussing the forthcoming “technopoly” of today, three decades before it arrived, the philosopher Neil Postman posited that what can be done will be done. In other words, as we race towards the future, the only ethical justification for an action will be whether or not we can. AI exists because it exists. The question of whether it should is moot.

But these are questions that Fanning routinely raises in a record that seems to race forward itself. If that all sounds a bit heavy, then perhaps hit skip for today. But you’d best be sure to confront Take Me Back to Nowhere at some point. And when you do, you’ll be rattled by it.

Throughout the album, Fanning does a tremendous job of building anxiety. Thankfully, this isn’t done cheaply through dissonance – it always remains melodically pleasing – but subtly crafted tempo builds, time signature switch-ups, and the introduction of something eerie create a wickedly uncanny feeling as the songs race off ahead of you, only stopping to drag you along.

With his trademark baritone booming over his fullest mixes to date, Fanning remains a helpful presence guiding you through the onslaught of ideas and cunning experimentation on display. At no point does the philosophising become too bleak, as the Dubliner welcomes in romance and sparser I’m Your Man-like moments to invoke the reality that we’re all still just humans trying to live through it all.

Routinely, both the record’s sound and its words range from the macro to the micro. Frenetic finales of electric guitar and synth overtures, accompanied by thoughts on capitalist realism, are suddenly replaced by sustained notes and softer soundbites about the daily grind. The result is a record that is always interesting and always keeps you on your toes.

You can’t quite relax into this fourth album in the way you might have with You Should Go Mad, and it isn’t quite as knowable as Mushroom Cloud, but it doesn’t intend to be any of those things. It intends to be a whirlwind of now, and it achieves that supremely with enough room for crooned choruses.

The Verdict: Thrilling noir and full of ideas about the nature of time, technology, and even modern medicine, there’s no doubting that Take Me Back to Nowhere is a full-on album. But it’s an onslaught that usually proves thrilling, often feels vital, and in the moments in between, it is merely catching its breath.

Defining Track: ‘Today Is For Forgetting’

Release Date: February 6th, 2026 | Producer: AS Fanning | Label: K&F Records