Zorked - Vinyle Vert Bouteille

Description

"Zorked" is an adjective describing what happens when you get completely drunk or high, or even just extremely tired. And Julia Shapiro, of Chastity Belt, Childbirth and Who Is She?, much like everyone else on the planet, has been in this state numerous times in 2020. In March, she left Seattle’s winter gloom for the sunshine and unlimited possibilities of Los Angeles, only to find herself in near-total isolation. With nowhere to go and nothing to do, she started working on her second solo album, *Zorked*. The result gives us her vision of Los Angeles: desolate lands melting in slow motion, a place to commune with ghosts and distorted legacies. Living right next to a man who spent his 2020 singing karaoke ten hours a day, Julia was able to write, record and play her instruments without worrying about noise complaints. Her roommate, Melina Duterte (Jay Som), transformed their house into a home studio that made it possible to materialize the sound Julia had in mind. Melina also agreed to co-produce the record, pushing Julia creatively and ensuring that the new tracks moved away from *Perfect Vision*, her debut album, or the songs she performs with Chastity Belt. At the height of her uncertainty and discomfort, she dove in headfirst in search of something new and found her answer in the form of powerful sounds. This is evident from the opening track "Death (XIII)", which draws inspiration from the tarot card, drone metal, and shoegaze. Julia layers walls of guitars, bass chords, and drum programming. On "Come With Me", the album’s first single, she recounts a mushroom trip gone wrong. On "Wrong Time", shimmering guitars smoke and levitate, while on "Hall of Mirrors", concluding the album, a sense of lost identity becomes omnipresent. It’s the sound of a life lived in servitude to digital screens and the invisible psychological damage they cause. Although Julia Shapiro found herself almost like a hermit, composing and recording almost all the instruments on the album herself and struggling to find her place in a comatose city, she still managed to maintain her sense of humor.