Autorock & Anaïs - Somebody yesterday / Kill september
Certain memories concern things that actually happened, while others seem to belong to places we never visited, relationships that never quite became what they might have been and versions of ourselves that existed only as possibilities. This unusual territory between memory, absence and possibility lies at the centre of Somebody yesterday / Kill september, a beautiful new two-track release credited jointly to Autorock / Anaïs, released on September 21, 2026 through Nightrain Records.
Across slightly more than thirteen minutes, the two compositions form a remarkably coherent meditation on time, love and disappearance. The collaboration feels particularly natural because Autorock and Anaïs were already occupying neighbouring musical territories, approaching shoegaze and atmospheric music from different directions.
Autorock formed in Chiavari, Liguria, in 2015 around Mirko Galli, Niki Gresteri and Samuel Fabio, gradually developing a sound situated between post-rock, noise, shoegaze and atmospheric rock. Their music often possesses a cinematic quality, something increasingly apparent on releases such as Between Us in 2023 and Love Always Loses in 2024. Rather than using distortion simply for its physical impact, Autorock frequently allow guitars, repetition and noise to construct emotional landscapes.
Anaïs, the long-running Genoese project involving vocalist Francesca Pongiluppi, approaches similar territory from a more intimate direction. Rooted in indie pop and slowcore, its music has invited comparisons with Mazzy Star, Galaxie 500 and The Velvet Underground, combining sparse arrangements, hazy guitars and delicate vocals. Anaïs also explored more pronounced shoegaze textures on The Belle of Amherst in 2023.
The connection between the two projects was already established before this release. Pongiluppi appeared as one of the guest vocalists on the title track of Autorock's Love Always Loses in 2024, alongside Ludovica Pesce. Crediting this new release to Autorock / Anaïs, rather than simply presenting Pongiluppi as a guest singer, consequently feels significant because both musical identities contribute to the result.
For these recordings, Francesca Pongiluppi provides the lead voice, Samuel Fabio plays drums and guitars and contributes vocals, Mirko Galli handles bass and vocals, while Niki Gresteri plays guitars and piano alongside additional vocals. The music was collectively composed by Galli, Gresteri and Fabio, with lyrics by Gresteri. The two songs were recorded, mixed and mastered by Mattia Cominotto at Greenfog Studio in Genoa in June 2026.
At 5 minutes and 21 seconds, “Somebody yesterday” explores a particularly unusual form of nostalgia. Despite its English title, its lyrics are written in Italian and revolve around memories that do not correspond entirely with lived experience. Gresteri evokes places never visited, people we never became and encounters that somehow seem capable of being remembered despite never really occurring.
The song therefore deals less with nostalgia for the past than with nostalgia for a possibility. There is something particularly melancholic about mourning a relationship that never fully developed or a life that remained hypothetical, because there is no genuine history capable of providing closure. The alternative version remains permanently suspended in imagination.
Musically, this is where the meeting between Autorock and Anaïs becomes especially effective. Pongiluppi's restrained voice provides an intimate centre while the guitars construct a much larger atmosphere around her. The blurred textures complement the uncertainty of the lyrics, giving the impression of memories whose outlines are gradually disappearing.
If Somebody yesterday looks towards an unrealised past, “Kill september” turns towards the future. At 7 minutes and 49 seconds, it is the more expansive and darker of the two compositions, transforming September into a psychological border between something ending and something else beginning.
Its imagery of bodies, accidents, abandoned dreams and repeated experiences creates the impression that time is not simply moving forward but circling back upon itself. “Killing September” can therefore be understood as an impossible attempt to interrupt that cycle before October arrives and everything begins again in another form.
This idea works particularly well within Autorock's post-rock vocabulary. Repetition allows apparently simple musical figures to accumulate emotional weight, while shoegaze removes some of their edges until guitars, voices and atmosphere begin merging together. These textures are particularly suited to songs concerned with the instability of memory and the inevitability of time.
The themes also extend ideas already present on Love Always Loses, where love frequently appeared as something fragile and temporary and where landscapes, weather and passing time became ways of expressing emotional states. Here, however, the perspective becomes broader. Somebody yesterday considers what might have existed, while Kill september confronts what cannot ultimately be prevented.
Pongiluppi's presence gives those large themes a necessary human vulnerability. Anaïs brings intimacy without making Autorock smaller, while Autorock gives that intimacy a much larger environment in which to exist. Shoegaze becomes the natural meeting point, connecting Autorock's post-rock and noise with Anaïs' slowcore and dreamlike indie pop.
The collaboration also benefits from its refusal to hurry. With only two tracks occupying more than thirteen minutes, atmosphere, repetition and gradual development are allowed to become essential parts of the compositions rather than simply bridges between conventional song sections.
Neither piece offers an easy resolution. It is impossible to return to a life that never happened, just as it is impossible to prevent October from arriving by wishing September away. Yet music can temporarily preserve emotions after their circumstances have disappeared and can sometimes even create the strange sensation of remembering something that was never actually experienced.
That is why these two magnificent songs work so well together. Somebody yesterday / Kill september feels less like a conventional two-track single than a small diptych examining what time removes from our lives and what imagination refuses to surrender.
Autorock and Anaïs arrive with different histories but remarkably compatible instincts. One brings the scale of post-rock, noise and atmospheric shoegaze, while the other contributes the intimacy and suspended melancholy of slowcore and dreamlike indie pop. Together, they have created thirteen beautiful minutes in which memory, possibility and the passage of time seem briefly capable of occupying the same space.
© Thusblog
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