TARUKI Confronts Identity Head-On With “Fading Light”

TARUKI is pushing deeper into emotional and sonic chaos with “Fading Light,” a raw alternative release that strips away polished perfection in favor of something far more human. Led by Joe Jones alongside collaborators with credits tied to Powerman 5000, ONE OK ROCK, and Beartooth, the project leans heavily into live instrumentation, vintage gear, tape recording, and emotionally unfiltered performances that feel intentionally resistant to today’s hyper-processed rock landscape.

Rather than framing pain through dramatic clichés, “Fading Light” focuses on the exhausting pressure of chasing a version of yourself that may never actually exist. From the opening line, “Chasing the shadow of a fading light,” the song immediately establishes its emotional weight, pulling listeners into themes of identity collapse, self-comparison, and emotional burnout. Nothing here feels theatrical for the sake of sounding deep. The emotion lands because it feels lived-in.

Sonically, the track balances atmosphere and aggression without ever feeling overproduced. There’s tension sitting inside every vocal strain and distorted guitar layer, giving the song an emotional realism that feels impossible to fake. Instead of smoothing out imperfections, TARUKI leans directly into them, allowing the cracks in the performance to become part of the experience itself. The production feels heavy without becoming bloated, chaotic without losing control.

Lyrically, “Fading Light” becomes increasingly devastating the deeper it goes. Lines like “Constantly searching for meaning in who I’m not” capture the specific kind of self-destruction that comes from measuring yourself against impossible standards shaped by outside expectations, relationships, and internal pressure. The repeated question, “Can I put an end to this?” lingers throughout the track without ever fully resolving, which makes the emotional tension hit even harder. TARUKI never offers an easy answer because real emotional collapse rarely arrives in clean, organized thoughts.

The bridge fully detonates the emotional weight of the track. “Whispers in my head that I’m not enough” builds into a final eruption that feels less like a performance choice and more like someone finally losing their grip on silence itself.

In an era where so much modern rock feels algorithmically optimized for passive listening, “Fading Light” demands emotional presence. It’s uncomfortable, vulnerable, chaotic, and painfully human from beginning to end.

“Fading Light” deals heavily with identity erosion and chasing versions of yourself that may not even be real anymore. Was there a specific moment in your life that forced you to confront that feeling head-on? Honestly, it is two-sided for me. On one hand, I look at the world we are living in right now, and I see people constantly being pushed toward versions of themselves that may not even be real. We are surrounded by perfect moments, perfect lives, perfect outcomes, and your brain starts measuring itself against something that was never a natural baseline for any human being.

But the more personal side is that I spent a lot of my life trying to be somebody. Trying to leave a mark, trying to matter enough that I would not be forgotten. That is a heavy thing to carry. The longer you carry it, the sadder that reflection in the mirror gets.

These days, I genuinely do not care as much what anyone thinks of me. The strange irony is that caring less about being important to the world has probably made me much happier as a person. There is a real freedom in letting go of the version of yourself you thought you had to become. To me, “Fading Light” is two sides of that coin at the same time. It is about the illusion the world sells you, but it is also about the illusion you sell yourself.

A lot of modern rock and alternative music feels heavily polished or emotionally filtered. TARUKI almost does the opposite. Why was preserving rawness and imperfection so important for this project sonically?

Most of it came from reaching a place in my life where I just wanted things to be as real as they could be. For this project, I was not interested in making something that felt plastic or overly sanitized. I did not want every edge rounded off until there was nothing left that could make someone uncomfortable.

I think that matters more now than it ever has. With the rise of AI and endless digital perfection, we are getting further away from what being human actually sounds like, and that is not just a technology problem. It has bled into art, into music, into the way people present themselves and their lives. We are so used to the curated version of everything that a rawer version almost feels wrong to people now.

Ya know, I miss records where you could hear someone actually trapped inside the moment they were singing about. You could hear the breath, the strain, the pain, and the imperfections that made the performance feel alive. I also miss when records had fingerprints. Before everything started being pushed through the same tools and the same production habits, you could hear a guitar tone or a drum kit and instantly know who it was. There was an identity to it, a voice. I feel like so much of that has been lost.

That is the connection I care about. Not perfection for the sake of perfection, but one flawed human being reaching another flawed human being. We are still working hard on these recordings. We still polish, and we still care deeply about tone, arrangement, performance, and production. But we try to do it in a way that protects the human part instead of sanding it away. The moment you polish out all the humanity, you have not necessarily made something better. You have just made something safer, a product. And safer has never been what TARUKI is about.

The line “Constantly searching for meaning in who I’m not” feels like the emotional core of the song. Do you think social media and modern culture have made that kind of self-comparison harder to escape now?

One hundred percent, and I think most people, whether they realize it or not, are constantly comparing themselves to something they perceive as greater or better off. The grass is always greener. That is not a new feeling, but social media has poured gasoline on it in a way that I do not think we have fully reckoned with yet. I have been stuck in that place. And if I am being honest, I still get stuck there sometimes. It does not fully go away.

But what started pulling me out of it was finally realizing that none of it actually matters. Being a copy of a copy of something else is not living but rather a performance, and I would rather fail completely and be myself than succeed as another link in this world’s never-ending funhouse mirror. No version of that trade makes sense to me anymore.

I think that is what the line is really about. Not just the comparison itself, but the way it robs you of the only thing you actually have: your own life, your own story, and your own version of what it means to be here.

TARUKI functions more like a trusted creative collective than a traditional band. How does working with longtime collaborators and friends change the emotional honesty of the music compared to working in more industry-driven environments?

For me, it has always been about relationships. You can find someone any day of the week who can play a part. There are so many incredibly talented people in the world. But talent was never the only thing I was looking for. Obviously, everyone involved in TARUKI is insanely talented, and many of them are better musicians than I am, but the thing that matters most to me is shared vision. Genuine care. Especially Greg M. Johnson and Graham Rowell, we are long-time creative partners.

What I love about the people around TARUKI is that they bring that care without being asked. Greg, Graham, Connor, Denis, Ben Cato, Bradley Pallone, and Thomas all understand what we are building and what it is supposed to feel like. Some of them are on this song, some are elsewhere on the record, but they all bring something that feels really personal.

Because of that trust, I give everyone a tremendous amount of freedom. I do not usually walk in and say, “Here is the fill you need to play,” or, “Here is the bassline I want.” I try to give people the emotional center of the song and then let them respond to it honestly. Most of the time, I just say, “Do what you think it needs.”

What comes back is almost always more honest and more alive than anything I could have prescribed. To me, that is the difference between a creative collective and a band for hire. One is executing a part. The other is adding a real pulse to something alive.

“Fading Light” never really offers listeners a clean resolution or hopeful ending. Was it important for you to leave the song emotionally unresolved instead of forcing closure onto something that still feels ongoing in your own life? Life does not offer clean resolutions, and neither does this feeling. That is the honest answer. The pursuit of who you think you are supposed to be does not have a finish line. It does not have a moment where the music swells, and everything clicks into place. It is ongoing. It is a process, and I think forcing a hopeful ending onto something that is still very much alive in my own life would have been a lie.

What the song is really asking, what I am still asking myself, is where am I at? Who am I? Am I being as real as I can be right now, or am I still chasing some reflection of something that keeps passing me by? That is not a question you answer once. You answer it every day. Sometimes you get it right, and sometimes you don’t. I wanted the song to live in that place because that is where I actually live. Putting a bow on it would have been the most dishonest thing I could have done to it.