The Fismits Release ‘Falling Joy’: Three Decades, One Creative Journey, Five Songs Finally Set Free

Indie-alternative rock project The Fismits releases its long-awaited new EP, Falling Joy, alongside the release of third single ‘When‘ and a special launch performance at Railways Cafe.

For most artists, an EP represents a collection of songs recorded over a year or two. For The Fismits, Falling Joy represents the completion of a journey that began more than thirty years ago.

The songs that make up the EP trace their origins back to the early 1990s, when songwriter, producer and The Fismits founder Mark Biagio was studying in Durban and developing a creative partnership with fellow songwriter Bruce Barrett in a band called The Mind Theatre. During those formative years, Barrett wrote a collection of songs that would leave a lasting impression on Biagio. Some were performed live. Others remained unfinished. Many lingered quietly in memory, rehearsal rooms and private recordings long after the band itself had faded into history.

Rather than allowing those songs to remain frozen in time, Biagio spent the last several years revisiting them through the lens of experience, reshaping and reinterpreting them for a completely different stage of life. The result is Falling Joy, a five-track release that feels both deeply personal and surprisingly contemporary.

Recorded during 2024 and 2025 at Dirty Badger Music, the EP does not attempt to recreate the past. Instead, it asks what happens when songs written by young musicians are revisited by the people they eventually became. It is that question that gives Falling Joy its emotional weight. Across the record, youthful urgency meets adult perspective. Ambition meets reflection. Nostalgia is present but never allowed to dominate. Instead, the songs are treated as living works, evolving naturally through time and experience. The release follows a carefully paced rollout that introduced audiences to different sides of the project.

The first single, ‘Scars‘, released in March 2026, quickly emerged as one of the defining moments of the campaign. Long regarded by those close to the material as one of Bruce Barrett’s strongest compositions, the song combines a distinctive guitar riff with subtle rhythmic complexity and an emotional intensity that refuses to fade. Although it had existed in various forms for decades, Biagio maintained that the definitive version only emerged once the right key, vocal phrasing and arrangement were discovered. The response to ‘Scars‘ reinforced the idea at the heart of Falling Joy: some songs simply need time.

The second single, ‘Independence‘, arrived in May 2026 and revealed a very different side of the EP. Originally rooted in the British indie influences that shaped much of the early 1990s alternative landscape, the song was dramatically reimagined. Electronic textures, looping rhythms and an unmistakable 1980s aesthetic transformed the track into one of the most adventurous recordings in The Fismits catalogue. Playful, unexpected and creatively unconstrained, ‘Independence‘ demonstrated that revisiting older material did not mean being bound by it.

Now the final chapter arrives with ‘When‘. Originally written by Bruce Barrett in the mid-1990s and first performed by The Mind Theatre, ‘When‘ captures a feeling that many South Africans know intimately: the desire to move forward while wrestling with uncertainty about what lies ahead. Its lyrics speak of departure, ambition, perseverance and self-belief. Yet what makes the 2026 version particularly compelling is the perspective from which it is delivered. The voice singing these words is no longer the voice of a young man imagining the future. It is the voice of someone who has lived through much of that future and returned to the song carrying the experiences that followed. In doing so, ‘When‘ becomes more than a revival. It becomes a conversation across time.

That same conversation continues throughout the EP. The brief title track, Falling Joy, acts as a reflective interlude, drawing its name from a lyric in another Bruce Barrett composition and encapsulating the record’s central idea: that joy and loss often arrive together.

The closing track, ‘Too Small A Word‘, takes perhaps the most dramatic transformation of all. Once conceived as a grand, classic-rock statement, it has been stripped back and rebuilt into something darker, more vulnerable and emotionally exposed. It closes the EP not with certainty, but with honesty.

Taken together, these five songs form a body of work concerned with memory, friendship, identity and the strange relationship between who we were and who we become. The release also represents another significant chapter in the evolution of The Fismits itself.

Since emerging in 2016 as a three-piece project founded by Mark Biagio alongside long-time friends Nielle and Arthur, The Fismits has continually evolved while remaining rooted in an independent DIY spirit. Over the years, releases such as ‘Anywhere‘, ‘Before the Hindsight‘ and the 2024 single ‘Halen‘ established Biagio as a songwriter unafraid to explore themes of family, responsibility, loss, resilience and personal history.

‘Halen’ foreshadowed much of what would follow. Originally written decades earlier alongside members of the influential South African band Live Jimi Presley, the song was finally completed and released as a tribute following the passing of frontman Marc ‘Presley’ Feltham. Like many of the songs on Falling Joy, it demonstrated Biagio’s growing interest in unfinished creative conversations and the possibility of completing them years later with greater clarity and emotional understanding.

That thread now reaches its fullest expression on Falling Joy. Far from being an exercise in nostalgia, the EP stands as a statement about artistic persistence. It is about allowing songs the time they need to become what they were always meant to be.

To celebrate the release, The Fismits will perform a special EP launch show at Railways Cafe on Friday 26 June alongside The Barcode Bandits and Later Alligator. The event marks not only the public launch of the record but also the culmination of a creative journey spanning more than three decades.

For audiences discovering The Fismits for the first time, Falling Joy serves as an introduction to a songwriter committed to emotional honesty and craft. For those who have followed the project’s journey, it represents something rarer. A destination. Not because the story ends here, but because a chapter that began in rehearsal rooms and student years in Durban has finally found its conclusion.

And after thirty years of waiting, these songs are finally ready to belong to the world.

Stream or download Falling Joy EP today here. Watch the music video here.

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