London-based artist and producer Art School Girlfriend shares, 'Doing Laps', the third taste of upcoming album Lean In - due March 11 via Fiction Records.
Disillusionment has never sounded so good on ‘Doing Laps’ on which Polly Mackey ruminates on the effects of making art during a time of ever-growing digital claustrophobia, “Tried a fantasy out / never knew it was boring. Live your life on a string / noticing when you stop calling / a spade is a spade” Mackey sings in her hypnotising voice, pissed off, tired but resolute. These are the lyrics of a songwriter who’s seen it all, done the laps, and is transcending — making music purely for her own enjoyment.
“The dichotomy persists,” explains Mackey: “continue releasing music under a paradigm that offers little remuneration and contributes to
the cultural devaluation of music, or withdraw entirely and create solely for personal pleasure?” Radio static — recorded from a 1970s transistor radio — builds and releases throughout, and ticking hi-hat and cajoling treadmill beat are cut across by the soft bubble of the synth refrain, like a tactile, meditative finger tap. Within the dichotomy Mackey talks of, she injects her own space, her own peace.
Listen to ‘Doing Laps’ on North London Forever.
Armed with the freedom and space to experiment, Lean In was self-produced in her own East London studio and sees Art School Girlfriend set to move from cult bedroom artist to one of the UK’s most vital artist/producers operating at the moment, tackling alternative rock, electronic pop & experimental ambient sounds in her most cohesive work to date. Last year, Art School Girlfriend shared ‘L.Y.A.T.T.’, a shoegaze and techno-tinged meditation on love quickly followed by ‘The Peaks’, which was recently added to the BBC Radio 6 Music
playlist.
Lean In arrives at a time where her audience has grown exponentially, partly due to her diverse involvement across the music scene at large – contributions to the work of Daniel Avery, Lane 8, Jasper Tygner and Ghostpoet; being chosen by Bonobo to DJ at his Outliers series at Drumsheds; touring the US with both The Japanese House and Marika Hackman; a notable DJ set for HOR; producing and engineering for up-and-coming post-rock band Pencil; the tastemaker curation of her five-years-in-the-running monthly radio show on Foundation FM.
Self-producing, writing and recording Lean In, Mackey invites the listener to quite literally lean into the world she has built around her. With every detail intentional, this new record is less of a honing of her trademark sound of emotional blend of electronic sounds and shoegaze – and more of an expansion of it. At the top of next year, she will perform these new tracks for the first time on a UK headline tour.
