roughcut #2

mother of god, it's been one year of the knife

It’s been a whole year of the Knife?! One year since I unveiled Mother of God, the song that cracked it all open. A song I’m eternally grateful for.

A year on, a question I still get frequently asked is about the choice to incorporate ‘the knife’, something so personal, into my name. So as a birthday present, here’s the context. My relationship with my body and pain is something that underpins all the work, as it does my life, even if just subliminally. It’s so intrinsic to the way I experience the world that it only made sense to incorporate it, boldly, into my artist name. It’s an empowering reclamation of the surgical knife for sure, but it’s also a joining together of my identity. I feel whole now (it’s kinda weird).

It was my bff James (the inimitable artist Saint Torrente btw) that first suggested the addition of the knife on one of our regular everything calls and I dismissed it quite abruptly (sorry James). Then one morning I woke up and immediately said it out loud. Something had shifted in the night that made me wake up with it ringing around my skull. I sat with it for a while, spoke to friends, my sister, my parents, floated it as an idea with people whose minds and eyes I really value and adore. I then googled ‘Imogen’ as a last ditch attempt to see if anything else sparked imagination or if ‘the knife’ was it. The first image to come up was a painting of the character Imogen from the Shakespeare play ‘Cymbeline’. She was beautiful, enrobed in blue, and… she was carrying a knife. It was over. Done. It all felt bigger than me then and unquestionably right. To be honest, that kind of thing has been happening ever since. Points meeting, perfect convergence, a joining together of my identity in a way that makes me feel whole… and as someone who has always felt fractured - be it between cities, between accents, within my body, on and off stage - I’m still getting used to it.

Building this world has been an ongoing, living process. Every decision - visual, sonic, performance - has been part of an evolving language, one that I’m still learning how to speak fluently. But the connection between artist and audience, between Imogen and the Knife and those who resonate with it, has been the most powerful discovery of all.

So here I am, a year in. The Knife is still sharp (ha), still shifting in my hands. The journey has only just begun. But if the first year has taught me anything, it’s that meaning is not something you impose - it’s something you uncover, something revealed in the space between the music and you legends who choose to engage. Thank you thank you thank you.

I’ve just announced a string of festivals that are gonna bring the knife to corners of the UK I’ve never played before. Hopefully there’s one near you…