TD 1
You don’t get to see anybody in contrast to live
gigs, and I found I was still able to get that high off just screaming on my own, which is kinda funny. always wanted to try breaking from that. Eventually I thought, I want to be doing the shit I want and just fail. I was so excited just to fail. I’m trying to simulate what it is like to be inside the noggin, and that’s why it’s podcasts and videos too. I can’t do one thing for too long.” By late July, he is living in Granada and intends on staying there indefinitely. “I think it’s the best thing that ever happened to me. It’s shit of course, but in the professional sense, it’s forced me to do what I wanted to do with no more making of excuses.” “For a lot of bands, they feel ‘aw shit, this quarantine has fucked me,’ but you know what they said in World War One: England’s difficulty is Ireland’s opportunity. That makes me accelerate ten times more. Forget what I did before, now we’re going to do a web series or a rant about cancel culture.” “I always had people telling me ‘no’. Unconstructive nos. So eventually it became: I’m going to just fucking do this and that. If it doesn’t work, I don’t care. At least I tried.” The big question however is where to next? NITEFISH has been investigating how to do socially distant gigs. “I’ve been looking at bubble suits, hazmat suits, sumo-wrestling outfits.” PDF has gone all out on the podcast, using it as the outlet for every other aspect of his art. Toke O’Drift is preparing an album and a documentary on Dublin’s independent music scene. And KnifeFist set up a DJ collective, mid-quarantine, called Bitten Twice. Alongside producers Rory Sweeney and Fomorian Vein, the collective’s plan is to release a compilation and work towards getting unconventional artists into Dublin’s clubs once they reopen. “There does need to be a threshold and standard,” KnifeFist says. “But I remember seeing one show in the States where instead of playing music, the band put Vaseline on their hands and wrestled the guitars, and I like places that give you the ability to craft silly things like that.” And that expression of creative freedom gets to the heart of what drives the capital’s digital netherworld. It is raw, polarising and deranged, but compellingly cathartic in its mania. “The heart gets hard without something to believe in,” Knifefist bellows on his track Knob. “I set to freak the only way I believe in.” Knifefist Bitten Twice’s compilation album will be released on August 21. 22