feeo

feeo (aka Theodora Laird) is like a rare mineral that changes its structure according to the effects produced by other material elements and whose interior is very different from what the eye perceives at first glance. An active agent of a new wave of experimental London artists, certain modes in her outward appearance would invite one to inscribe her in the ‘’wellness trap‘’ that James Gormley detects in certain contemporary aesthetics, a silent but deceptive and morbid conception of the relations between music and society determined by the capitulation of the subject after decades of demobilisation and capitalist inversions. (We would say in both senses if English shared with Spanish the polysemy of the word “inversión”, which also covers the meaning of investment).

However, feeo’s music has nothing to do with temporal paralysis. On the contrary, as shown in all her projects and collaborations—soon to be joined by a first album under the pseudonym presented here—Laird’s work is overtly aware of the problems of temporality and is therefore concerned with movement. She poetically translates different narrative forms that history borrows from literary theory, returning to the song its wide compositional possibilities and constructing politically subtle bubbles (class struggle, colonialism, Thatcherism, the feelings of the modern subject et al.) enveloped in a sometimes seemingly comfortable haze.

This podcast exposes some of the many influences, inflections and shifts in temperament of an oeuvre that encompasses whispers, musitations, wails, declamations, intonations and choirs; r&b, glitch, noise, improvisation, field recordings, doom guitars, dub and avant-garde gestures.

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SOUNDS I REMEMBER – Mix/collage exploring memory and loss. Featuring sounds and songs from my childhood resampled, looped and manipulated onto tape, woven in with iPhone field recordings, new work of mine and a selection of recent musical findings that felt semantically resonant/ relevant.

Also featuring reconstituted sonic material from Marvin Gaye, a conversation with dad, The BFG, Mac Demarco, a family car trip in Sweden, Joni Mitchell, Fleetwood Mac, singing in a church with Ciara and Rosa, industry sounds from the docklands.

Cover by María I. Acosta.