My introduction to the Florida-now-Philly based band Her New Knife was late one night in June whilst sitting on the floor next to my bathtub. One of my greatest secrets is the fact that I love to sing and dance to myself in the bathroom, pretending I’m performing every song that comes on shuffle. This particular night I was listening to a lot of feeble little horse, They Are Gutting A Body of Water, and other shoegaze artists related to the independent label, Julia’s War (run by TAGABOW’s leader Douglas Dulgarian), whilst air-guitaring myself into oblivion. When taking a quick breather and searching for something new to put on, I came across Her New Knife’s EP “lead dreams/flayed so light” which had been released on Julia’s War this past March. I pressed play on the song “douglasland.v1” and was greeted with the familiar warmth of distorted guitars. As much shoegaze will always have a special place in my heart, in the past few years it’s developed into a genre oversaturated with essentially the same vocal effects and fuzzy instrumentation traded around amongst every band. Needless to say, it’s exceedingly rare when bands like Her New Knife come around and warp the genre into something that is completely their own. From the moment the vocals came in on the first song, I was hooked. Each track on their latest EP is powerful, raw, and incredibly addictive. After listening through “Ruin,” and “Mouth,” I couldn’t get enough of their sound and spent the rest of the night jumping up and down across the tiled floor banging my head to every beat. Luckily for me, when I returned to New York in August, the band announced they were playing at the famed venue “Trans-Pecos” here in Ridgewood, Queens along with Buff Ginger, Trinket, and fellow Julia’s Warriors, Ringing. Before their set I got the chance to ask the members a few questions about themselves and the band and here’s what went down:
[Note: This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.]
Could everyone go around and introduce yourselves for the record? Tell me your name, what instrument you play, and something you’re looking forward to!
Could everyone go around and introduce yourselves for the record? Tell me your name, what instrument you play, and something you’re looking forward to!
Elijah: My name is Elijah. Ford. I play drums. I’m looking forward to playing pool after the show.
Edgar: My name’s Edgar Atencio. I play guitar. I’m also looking forward to playing pool tonight.
Carolina: My name is Carolina Schooley. I play bass and I’m looking forward to moving out of Florida.
Ben: I’m Ben Kachler. I play guitar, and I’m looking forward to finishing eating this pork roll.
I was trying to do some research before and I couldn’t find very much on you guys. I was wondering if you could tell me how Her New Knife began, what made you want to start a band, and how you all met?
Edgar: Well we’ve been playing music, Elijah and I have been playing music, and we met in college. We were playing for a couple of years in this other band and then when that ended we just decided that we wanted to do other stuff so we started this band. I knew Ben in high school and we all went to school together, that’s where we all met. We all just came together like that.
Elijah: Yeah, and we met at the radio station. That kind of brought us together too. W–or no fuck… V89, WVFS Tallahassee. Shout out! We all kind of had a part of that.
What was it like working with Julia’s War on your latest release? I was also wondering if your song ‘douglasland.v1’ was named after Doug Dulgarian?
Elijah: Doug’s chill!
Edgar: Doug is chill. For the record, I love Doug. He’s definitely done a lot for us since moving to Philly from Florida. Julia’s War is great and it was really nice to put music out through them. But, the song is not about him or named after him…
Elijah: I didn’t even know his name was Doug…
Edgar: We wrote that song like over a year ago. Maybe two years ago or something… anyway, we have a dog, we have, like, a little dog and as a nickname around the house we would just call her Doug. We didn’t know what to call the song during our practice so “douglasland” just kind of came. It doesn’t have anything to do with the dog or anybody, though.
What were you listening to when creating the last EP, and generally who are your biggest inspirations when it comes to making music?
Elijah: You go Ben!
Ben: I go?
Elijah: Give your top three!
Ben: Top three musical inspirations… shit. I don’t know, I think I’ve been getting pretty into some Ornette Coleman, big fan of that. And fucking Revel. And then… something like crazy… I don’t even know a third one.
Carolina: Hmm. Well I’m just thinking about the Electronicon thing that’s going on. We like a lot of people in that line-up. Like Full Body 2…we also like Doss a lot and George Clanton is also in that line-up. We like him a lot!
Edgar: We wrote these songs a long time ago, like a couple years now, but I’m pretty sure that when we were writing and recording them I was listening to a lot of, like, club music. A lot of like Hikaru t.A.T.u remixes and a lot of Everything But The Girl. But yeah, we all like Doss a lot!
Elijah: I don’t know, maybe like… I mean I was listening to like TAGABOW…
Carolina: Steely Dan!
Elijah: [laughs] Yeah Steely Dan. Honestly, I was in a big Steely Dan phase. I don’t even know if it like influenced the songs at all. Damn I don’t know, Diiv, basic shit. They got the riffs, so!
If you could have a conversation with anyone–fictional, dead, alive, anyone– who would it be, and what would you talk about?
Ben: Maybe King Baratheon. You know he was on his king shit. [laughs]
Who is that?
Ben: He’s the dude from Game of Thrones. He was kind of living his life good. [laughs] I don’t know, he seemed pretty happy.
Elijah: John Coltrane?
Carolina: Maybe, maybe Anthony Bourdain. I’d ask him where to go eat right now.
Edgar: Yeah, that’s a good one. I’d probably hit up like… I’d have dinner with Jay-Z or something. Ask him how to make money.
Elijah: I would do the same thing!
What’s next for Her New Knife? What are you guys working on right now?
Elijah: Primarily, the number one thing is to make money. But secondly, we just made some tapes so that’s cool, through Julia’s War. We’re working on a–
Carolina: But we left the tapes at home.
Elijah: Yeah, but we do have them! We’re working on an LP. Tonight we’re playing basically all songs that will be on that LP. Just one song off the EP. Probably early next year that will come out. And just like little stuff too. We’ll probably put out some singles and music videos…
Edgar: Remixes!
Elijah: Remixes, yeah.
Edgar: Nightcore… We have nightcore remixes!
Elijah: Yeah! There’s some nightcore remixes, those are coming out.
Ben: We’re just slipping into nightcore.
Elijah: We just have them and we haven’t put them out!
Edgar: But yeah, we’re working on an album. We’re recording it later this year. Dylan Vaisey from Full Body 2 is helping produce it. And Ian Norris of Menu from Philadelphia is helping record it!
