Miss Grit shares a new video and single, ‘Lain (phone clone)’
MISS GRIT
PRESENTS NEW SINGLE ‘LAIN (PHONE CLONE)’
DEBUT ALBUM, FOLLOW THE CYBORG
OUT 24 FEBRUARY 2023 ON MUTE
“‘Follow the Cyborg’ gestures to a liberated future beyond binaries… its theatrical vision is striking.” – Pitchfork
MISS GRIT, the New York-based, Korean-American musician Margaret Sohn (they/she), presents ‘Lain (phone clone)’, the new single / video from their forthcoming debut Follow the Cyborg – out 24 February 2023 on Mute.
Watch the video for ‘Lain (phone clone)’
On ‘Lain (phone clone)’, Miss Grit balances vast pop elements, cinematic atmospherics and textures with audacious blasts of squealing guitar. Taking inspiration from the anime Serial Experiments Lain (Yasuyuki Ueda), about a girl whose online self attempts to drag her physical self away from reality, ‘Lain (phone clone)’ presents a chilling moment when Sohn sings, “I don’t want to see everything anymore.” They comment, “I feel like the divide between my inner and outer self can grow so big sometimes that it feels like I’m being eclipsed by this big cringey monster. I wanted to write this to mock the monster and remind myself I’m not powerless against it.”
Across Follow the Cyborg, Miss Grit pursues the path of a non-human machine, as it moves from its helpless origin to awareness and liberation. At times gentle and sparse, at others volatile and explosive, Follow the Cyborg occupies a sonic world of electronic experimentation and stirring electric guitars. It was recorded mostly in solitude in Sohn’s home studio, with the exception of a few guest collaborators joining: Stella Mozgawa of Warpaint, Aron Kobayashi Ritch of Momma, and Pearla.
Miss Grits’ impetus to conceive an album about the life of a cyborg stems from their own connection to this way of existing. As a mixed-race, non-binary artist, Sohn has always rejected the limits of identity thrust upon them by the outside world, in favour of embracing a more fluid and complex understanding of the self. Hailed by Rolling Stone as an “inventive, incisive singer-songwriter”, their process is introspective, their vision precise. In their exploration of the life of a cyborg, they subtly and overtly refer to films, including Her, Ex Machina, and Ghost in the Shell, as well as essays by Jia Tolentino (from Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion) and Donna Horroway’s A Cyborg Manifesto.
‘Lain (Phone Clone)’ follows the “beguiling and elastic” (Stereogum) single ‘Like You’, with its precise, slowly building electric guitars and bold basslines performed by Zoltan Sindhu, as well as the title-track ‘Follow the Cyborg’, praised by Pitchfork for its “adrenaline high” and “electronic dissonance.”
Two US dates will coincide with the album’s release, with more dates to follow.
MISS GRIT LIVE
22 Feb – NYC (US), Baby’s All Right
24 Feb – LA (US), Moroccan
Follow the Cyborg is out on smokey marbled vinyl, CD and digitally on 24 February 2023: https://mute.ffm.to/missgrit
FOLLOW THE CYBORG TRACKLISTING (Cat # STUMM483)
1. Perfect Blue
2. Your Eyes Are Mine
3. Nothing’s Wrong
5. Buffering
7. 사이보그를 따라와
8. Like You
9. The End
10. Syncing
‘Lain (phone clone)’: https://youtu.be/DppnvkcRG98
RECENT PRAISE
“Miss Grit’s ability to bring a raw and cerebral sensibility to electronic pop music has grown exponentially.” – The FADER
“‘Follow the Cyborg’ boasts the energy of an unbridled dance track (the percussion was provided by Warpaint’s Stella Mozgawa) with breathy bits of saxophone and Sohn’s expertly crafted guitar tones.” – Rolling Stone
“… while there’s a sense of imminent sci-fi dystopia to the sonic worlds she’s creating, Sohn’s future is very bright. Resistance, you might have guessed, is futile.” – Electronic Sound