Allan Jamisen “Closing In”

Phoenix-based composer and painter Allan Jamisen has long moved between visual art and recorded music without settling into a single category. His latest single “Closing In,” released on 16 May 2026, continues that fluid practice. The song began life not as music but as a poem, written in Copenhagen during the years following a divorce. There, in the early 1990s, Jamisen examined the emotional wreckage of the relationship and the patterns that had shaped it. The words arrived as part of a larger body of writing focused on healing, identity and transformation.

Years later the poem resurfaced in Phoenix. Jamisen met French musician, recording engineer and aspiring producer Olivier Zahm at a local hotel bar frequented by artists. Zahm’s European perspective immediately recalled Jamisen’s time in Denmark. The two agreed to work together, and for the first time Jamisen reversed his usual process: he handed Zahm the existing poem and invited him to shape the music around the language rather than the other way around.

The resulting track opens with expansive synth textures that shimmer against a lush percussive backdrop. Sporadic flashes of jangling guitar appear beneath Jamisen’s measured vocal delivery, which confronts vulnerability without melodrama. Lines such as “sometimes it’s not right enough to live in my own skin” land with quiet force. Haunting backing vocals, recorded later in Los Angeles with veteran producer and engineer John X Volaitis, add a reflective glow. The recurring refrain “closing in again” drifts through twangy guitar accents and buoyant rhythmic movement, while spacey synth pads and intertwining vocal layers heighten the emotional tension.

Further introspective lines “second-guessing instinct is the wrong way down a one-way street” deepen the psychological pull. The production itself traces a deliberate international path. Lead vocals were completed in Phoenix before Jamisen took the project to Los Angeles, where Volaitis engineered and co-produced additional vocal sessions. The final mix returned to Phoenix and Olivier Zahm.

Stream “Closing In” on Spotify

Jamisen’s wider trajectory informs the record’s weight. As a child he sang in Phoenix’s district honour choir. In his late teens he led a Los Angeles band that performed local clubs alongside guitarist Danny Saber, later producer for The Rolling Stones and INXS. He also performed with a university gospel choir in California and experimented early with a Tascam Porta One 4-track. In Copenhagen he collaborated with Claes Cornelius of Mega Records and produced electronic music with influential Danish DJ and promoter Frederik Birket-Smith.

The song does not resolve the turmoil it describes; instead it holds space for it, giving form to the uneasy beauty of transformation. In doing so, “Closing In” reaffirms Jamisen’s particular position: an outsider artist whose work draws strength from decades of accumulated experience, quiet persistence and the willingness to let a single poem wait until the right collaborators arrive.

Follow Allan Jamisen
Closing In is out now. Stream the single and explore the full catalog below.

Listen: Spotify
Follow: Instagram