INTRODUCING: The Actions

After a four-year silence, Bristol duo The Actions return with purpose—and a sharper edge. Their new single Take More doesn’t just mark a comeback, it signals a shift: less haze, more bite. Where their debut Flourish drifted through cinematic textures, this new chapter feels leaner, louder, and more confrontational—pulling their electronic roots into something closer to raw, restless urgency.

Built on themes of suburban frustration, stuckness, and the push-pull between escape and connection, “Take More” captures a band no longer holding back. As they step into 2026 with new music on the horizon, The Actions sound recharged, refocused—and ready to be heard.

“Take More” feels sharper and more confrontational than your earlier work — what shifted creatively for you both during the time away since Flourish?

The world changed, not just us. Flourish was born in a kind of global cathartic phase, a moment when everything felt suspended and reflective. That atmosphere has dissolved into what looks like a return to normality, but it actually feels like everything is slowly falling apart. On a global level, authoritarian drifts are pushing things into a darker place.

On a more personal level, people seem to have come back from that period carrying more anger inside. There’s a growing sense that the future feels emptier, there's less excitement about making plans, less care for the details, especially for anything that exists outside the algorithm.

We don’t feel like there’s time anymore for abstraction or transcendence. We now feel a strong urgency to be more direct, both musically and lyrically. “Take More” is our way of addressing that tension without filters.

You’ve described the track as rooted in suburban restlessness and that push–pull between staying and escaping. How personal is that story for you, and do you feel it reflects a wider generational mood right now?

We’re not sure if it reflects a whole generation — that’s difficult to say from where we stand. What we do know is that it’s deeply personal. It comes from the place we were born and the kind of youth we lived — always suspended between staying and leaving.

That suburban restlessness is the feeling of being both protected and stuck at the same time. You want to escape, but that place shapes you more than you realise. Whether that’s generational or not, it definitely feels shared by many people we’ve met along the way, maybe it’s because that tension isn’t ours alone.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQS5OVEpQMc

Your sound has always lived between rock and electronics, but this release leans into a more punk-like directness. Was that an intentional reset, or did it emerge naturally in the writing process?

The shift toward a more punk-like directness wasn’t intentional at all; it emerged naturally through the process.

After Flourish, we started creating music, unleashing the energy we’d been trapping for years. It was like a flood.

We wrote and composed a lot before it felt right to release Take More. There’s a full album currently in post-production, too, which we’re planning to release in 2026.

The single arrives with multiple versions — including the Flatland Mix and the IKO Twins remix. What do those alternative takes reveal about the song that the original doesn’t?

We spend a lot of time exploring the production of our songs, experimenting with different approaches and arrangements. With our multifaceted background as producers, it’s natural for multiple versions to emerge.

In the end, we always know which one will be the definitive version, but alternative mixes often reveal something new — a different angle on the melody or lyrics, or a nuance that complements the original. They let the song breathe in different ways.

With Mo also handling the video through MStar Design, how important is visual storytelling to The Actions — and how do you decide when a song needs its own cinematic world?

Most of the times, when we’re writing a new song, the visuals come to us almost at the same time. Some are clear, some just glimpses in our mind — but they’re always tied to the music from the start.

Storytelling is key, especially for songs that hit you straight in the face. Whether we make the video ourselves or work with a director, we aim to create a visual world that amplifies the song and its energy