Atom Lux Unveils Psychedelic New Single ‘Zombie Ant Fungus Strike’ Ahead of Upcoming EP
There’s something pleasingly off-kilter about the latest transmission from Rome-based multi-instrumentalist Lucio Filizola, operating under the Atom Lux banner.
Newly aligned with Octopus Rising (Argonauta’s more exploratory arm), Filizola introduces his forthcoming ‘Kamikaze Butterfly’ EP with a title that sounds like a lost Hawkwind B-side but is, in fact, rooted in cold, parasitic reality.
‘Zombie Ant Fungus Strike’ takes its cue from Ophiocordyceps unilateralis, the infamous fungus that infiltrates an ant’s nervous system, steering it toward a leafy demise before erupting and starting the whole grisly cycle again. Cheerful stuff. Filizola, however, treats it less as horror and more as narrative fuel – a day-in-the-life (and death) trip rendered in fuzz, echo and a heady swirl of garage-psych colour.
There’s a lineage here. Filizola cut his teeth in the prog-leaning Möbius Project (their 2014 ‘Ra Me Nivar’ worth a dig), but Atom Lux feels looser, more instinctive… part bedroom experiment, part fully-formed band vehicle. His 2025 debut ‘Voidgaze Dopamine Salad’ was a one-man affair in the truest sense, written, played and pieced together at home, yet since then the project has stretched into a five-piece live proposition with a taste for the unpredictable.
‘Zombie Ant…’ sits somewhere between worlds: DIY in spirit, but with enough bite to suggest a group pushing at the edges. Think wiry garage thrust, streaks of late-period psych and a slightly unhinged narrative thread holding it together.
More from the EP is promised in the coming months. On this evidence, it’s unlikely to stay within the lines.
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