Premiere: PRINCXX Crafts Goth-Infused Fantasy in ‘Sorry It’s My First Time' EP

Arts

Jun 1

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Sounding a call to goth, anime-loving queers near and far, PRINCXX has arrived with their fully fleshed out project, just waiting to be consumed.

PRINCXX is the moniker of nonbinary, Atlanta-based Blake England, and is a self-described, “immor(t)al non/binary/techno/wraith who's selfishly heavenbent on making nothing but tortured art with their time in the tangent.” The sentiment truly comes together when you dive into their new EP, Sorry It’s My First Time.

The four dark, instrumental tracks transport you to PRINCXX’s cryptic, otherworldly universe—immediately, track 1 “R3V0L” meshes sinister sounds and electronic samples with a daunting and persistent melodic progression, like getting lost in a haunted castle in a world that is neither present nor past, but something else entirely.

And, like many artists, PRINCXX and their world was partially built as a result the COVID-19 pandemic, though the roots of this project go back nearly a decade.

“I have been writing pretty cringe poetry for as long as I can remember,” PRINCXX said. “In 2011, I splurged and bought the second gen iPad when it came out, solely for Garageband. I fucked around for years making little loops and morphing sounds. I recorded and kept fucking around until 2019 when I finally cracked Ableton on my laptop. A few months later, 2020 happened. So, I had time to really get into it and flesh things out, just trying to make sounds that I liked. Those sounds turned into a couple of weird, little songs that I was happy with and to get it out there, I'd need a name.”

Sorry It’s My First Time is the first release for PRINCXX, also the first time they are releasing material as a nonbinary artist, which they said is inherently part of their music and inspiration for the EP’s title.

“This project helped evolve my identity and got me to accept that I wasn't creating from the perspective of a boy or a girl, and I've never seen myself as either.”

The four-track EP is soaked in PRINCXX’s curated, somewhat sinister and often ethereal essence, tailor-made as the artist slices and dices different sounds, like haunted house effects, destroyed anime clips, even recorded traffic. “G4SP,” a song about “capitalism and being a btich,” and “D0WNR,” a “sad, punchy techno warcry,” act as two complementary sides of a coin, both sinister, persistent tracks with hard-hitting beats. By the closer track, “N1C3 GW4R,” listeners are treated to what is arguably the calmest song in relation to the other tracks, still soaked in the artist’s handcrafted atmosphere and leaving listeners to return to their lives having just transported to PRINCXX’s eccentric universe.

The songs are all bite-sized, just about two to three minutes each, but don’t need any longer to paint a clear picture of PRINCXX’s vision. A big inspiration for the project and aura of PRINCXX is anime. “Anime opening/closing theme songs are pretty important, because they're usually only a minute long but give you the full rollercoaster of human emotion,” they said. “They're so good!”

Popping on their Instagram page gives you a visual array of inspiration and aesthetic often leaking out of PRINCXX’s music, like a screencap from the cult classic 1982 anime film The Last Unicorn with the closed caption ‘Screaming’ sitting beneath, or varied shots of medieval and gothic architecture.

“The only things I really like always end up being dramatic and/or dark,” they said. “PRINCXX is this hyperbole energy vampire persona that is just barely there, writhing in some abysmal dimension to some very scary techno music that hasn't made its way here yet. For me, that materializes into this nightmare-manic-fairy-princxx-gothic-horror-rave vibe that is just everything I'm about, fatal softness.”

Sorry It’s My First Time is released today, June 1st, 2021, along with the new, Hollywood-horror-themed music video for “N1CE GW4R.” Follow PRINCXX on Instagram, Spotify and Soundcloud for more music and news.

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Keegan Williams is a freelance writer, copy editor, and artist based in Los Angeles, CA. They are a nonbinary Scorpio infatuated with goth stuff and girl pop.

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