Album Art by Julia Louise Knifefist & Aisling Phelan
Julia Louise Knifefist is a 22-yo producer and lyricist based in Dublin, Ireland which has been active since the late 2010s. Their music is a dense, noise-imbued manipulation of dance music styles that are beaten to a pulp to form bloody pools of distorted kicks, overwhelming feedback, and truculent vocals. In the recent past, they started investing effort into the newborn, thriving Irish collective called Bitten Twice, focused on promoting experimental rave outputs and unconventional sounds. When it comes to their solo work, JLK is reportedly out to turn the listener’s insides on the outside, and they do that via an exciting mixture of genres taking shape in something that could be aptly referred to as rave rap, as nicely demonstrated in their first live appearance.
Late last year, JLK’s path met with the Ghent-based record label lieftuig, closely related to the Belgian Grid crew, on which young artists such as Moses, Neocitrus, and Knechtjong already appeared over the course of the past months. INERTIA EP is the final outing stemming from the encounter and the following interactions between the two parts: a four-tracker record, spanning just a little over 11 minutes, where JLK’s harsh vocal style and energetic production skills join with the vision of three other producers (namely Circular Square, who also curated the mastering of the release, and the aforementioned Neocitrus and Knechtjong).
“Inertia is the phenomenon that an object at rest stays at rest, but it is also that an object in motion stays in motion and the feeling of resistance when trying to change direction.”
With INERTIA EP, JLK’s variegated and unrestrained creative drive, already crystallized in previous singles such as 328, Synthetic Drip, and Bite Marks, brought them to the next level of inspiration, where chaos is unleashed by means of high-spirited, inflamed compositions, and catharsis is reached via entrancing rhythms. Today, we’re glad to be premiering the second track in the lotto, called Pixelated Dreams, and produced by Circular Square who also curated the video clip due next month together with Aisling Phelan.
When asked about the track, JLK refers that Pixelated Dreams is a “frustrated response to the idea of digitizing the human experience”, as they believe “many parts of the experience can’t be recreated, and the advancement of technology in this way feels absurd when unsustainable structures might make the planet uninhabitable and any human experience impossible“. Inspired by early dubstep and grime, the piece is a 150-second impressive run on which the bassline and the syncopated drums intertwine with the vocals, chanting detached lyrics that reflect on the feelings of rage, isolation, and disconnection (“Feeling Love and disgust / Spit and dirt in an open cut / Thousand miles between my blade and they neck / I’m dying to connect / All I see is pixelated dreams“). We’re sure you’ll be thrilled to stream the track via the player here below, as well as the entire EP that will be out in August 6th (pre-order at this link). Enjoy!
Follow Julia Louise Knifefist on SoundCloud, Bandcamp, and Instagram. Check out lieftuig’s catalog on Bandcamp and Soundcloud.
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We are a non-profit organization registered in December 2018, operating since late 2015 as a webzine and media website. In early 2017, we started our own event series focused on arts, experimental, and dancefloor-oriented music. We reject every invocation to “the Future” meant as the signifier for capitalistic “progress” and “innovation”, fully embracing the Present instead; we renounce any reckless and ultimately arbitrary division between “high” and “low”, respectable and not respectable, “mind” and “body”; we support and invite musicians, artists, and performers having diverse backgrounds and expressing themselves via variegated artistic practices.