machine girl - "wlfgrl"

classico. machine girl took on the herculean task of no-budget entire-country tours throughout north america pretty much nonstop after wlfgrl came out in 2014, an act that contributed massively to the current landscape of diy scene kids throwing renegades in abandoned spaces in whatever random town. mg was doing like 30 dates in a row playing in people's kitchens. this was a huge deal lol. i blame this band in particular for shaping the zoomer-alt-kid zeitgeist...they were so chronically online yet also made such a huge effort to consistently connect with as many local scenes as they possibly could. +++they filled the music with references to all kinds of y2k grimdark media, ginger snaps, lain, boogiepop phantom etc, stuff that is now so widely digested it haunts the design choices of those sponsored instagram boutiques selling distressed plaid longsleeves with those weird temu g-star/jnco hybrid black jeans.

i remember when wlfgrl was this like mysterious internet album ppl associated with teklife & juke (im p sure there was even an official dj earl remix in like 2015?). and spf420 too, like, if you don't know about spf420, look it up, it was ground zero for so much music today lol. the lineups were so stacked...yung sherman, whitearmor, vektroid, dj paypal, saint pepsi, blank banshee, ryan hemsworth, likeeeee lol.

the live band was/is insane. obv there were death grips comparisons by the time gemini came out, but for their first few yrs of notoriety it wasn't even clear to ppl who hadn't been to a show that there was a live vocal/drummer aspect. (peep the milkrun 2016 set on youtube for a beautiful glimpse of this era.) comparing artists to death grips at that time was like comparing games to dark souls idk. also, like, idk, they kind of were the only two live acts who toured consistently with an electronics/drumkit/vox setup. ngl i think a better comparison to the early mg live band is boredoms stuff like mc hellshit & dj carhouse lol https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-fThCvCqbsc. i remember it was always so funny to me that death grips had this word-of-mouth thing going around about how "nobody knows how to mix them live because the music is so new and different." mg never gave a fuck about the sound and just played with whatever was there, which was a big inspo to me. they showed up to like every local scene and refused to play the closing slot and made friends with everyone and influenced all kinds of bands, like, idk, Sea Moss out of pdx or like Eel Tank, blah blah. and those bands influenced mg too who would take it all back to the lab in ny, where the current-day club scene was just starting to pop at places like bossa nova civic club (check out lsdxoxo "body mods" to hear the logical conclusion of this moment pre-covid). pretty much all of this stuff was happening on myrtle-broadway.

when i was 15 in bellingham wa, i got in touch w them thru facebook and booked them to play my friend nate's living room. the show was total chaos...some weeb brought a projector and displayed these completely psychotic LSD hentai visuals which after a few songs got veto'd by the house's resident militant leftbook callout-poster lol. anyway mg loved bham and came back a few times, including a date right after the 2016 election, where they brought a trump pinata they'd bought beforehand in mexico city, threw it into the pit where it got Demolished right as ionic funk 20xx started...Sean the drummer became a friend. he gave me some rly prescient advice re: carving out an arts career & a not-hollowed life for urself when i first moved to NY (i think it was in 2016 when i went to an mg show at the now-defunct babycastles in lower manhattan, gods wisdom was also playing and there was a molly soda art installation that got trampled during the show). we shared a practice space complex for a few years early this decade and it was always nice to run into sean between sessions. crossing paths nd shooting the shit with him throughout the years has also been a big reminder that if u wanna rly do the music shit u have to actually be a nice and considerate human being lmao.

i was a total mg groupie like 2015-19 lol during the "mutant" era of nyc diy where u could go see deli girls dreamcrusher kill alters and machine girl p much every weekend at the glove or market hotel or pecos (before they had club soundsystems!! the speakers at pecos used to hang from these heavy ass chains and matt would always climb onto them and swing the entire speaker like a pendulum over the crowd). it was a vibrant scene, it feels so so far away now thx to the timesplit of 2020. there were completely fucking insane noise shows happening literally every day, and there was an actual real ass community of people who were like you know actually Doing Shit Outside. there was this one machine girl halloween show at market where this anime maid girl was scaling the pillar toward the ceiling while this shirtless muscle bro flexed with a giant traffic cone covering his head lmao. if u are new to nyc u won't remember the old horrible soundsystem. and if u are older than me you'll remember when market hotel was basically just a trap house where shit like this would happen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Or82_fWo9Y8 (source: millennial/gen x housemate literally used to live there way back in the day) i remember realizing machine girl was really going to blow up when they played a sold out show @ elsewhere main hall with le1f & the garden in i think 2018? there's footage of the show on youtube, it is insane...this kid channel63 was pushing ppl around and spitting fake blood on everyone which terrified the garden fans who had all shown up in jester facepaint and just wanted to bop around. respect to them. it was chaos.

obv 2020 changed everything and that entire irl counterpart to the url music became ultra-stratified. peep the garden's 2020 record "kiss my super bowl ring" if u want to hear one of the best final breaths of that moment. it brings me joy to see a new generation sprouting, full of young producers who are truly just completely terrifyingly cracked at production, pushing each other to come up with the weirdest music possible, play it as loud as possible for their friends at any opportunity. whenever i end up at these new functions now as an aging zoomer in 2026 i just feel so warm toward that entire mg era because it rly opened the door for me and so many other people re: what is possible musically & culturally if u just fucking Go For It and make something happen. there r so many more overtly queer && expressive && insane young artists/scenesters than there were 12 yrs ago when u still had to kind of lump mg in with, like, venetian snares and death grips lol. now all the kids know about boredoms and throbbing gristle and the entire history of every regional strain of gabber, and they had oil-era SOPHIE as an influence in high school, and idk where i'm really going with this, but yeah, respect to wlfgrl