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Being Zoe Wolfe.
A month or two ago I decided to start putting out tracks under the female alias Zoe Wolfe, there were a few different reasons for it. I was doing a lot of work with gender studies (I’m still not well versed in this area at all) as complimentary work to my photography. I was frustrated with music and found that it was more and more difficult to be objective under my alias at the time, I was also frustrated with the way music is disseminated over the internet, the incestuousness of the Dublin music scene and the lack of female involvement in Irish (particularly electronic) music. I asked my friend Zoe to act as the physical manifestation of Zoe, posing for photographs and being the face of the project.
The whole experience was a fairly massive eye opener, some people twigged it was me straight away, others didn’t at all. Some people just wanted to get the shift. Some people who I’d dealt with in a professional capacity before were unintentionally patronising. A lot of female listeners and producers said they found it inspiring. I myself probably would have fallen into the above categories, the idea of a hermetic female producer is incredibly enticing to a lot of bedroom DJs, I was definitely playing on that to some degree. I was cheating in some senses, to have the music be disseminated in ways that I couldn’t have done as myself, and it worked quite well.
In distancing myself from the music I allowed myself to make it more personal, most of the tracks follow some kind of linear narrative which I can directly relate back to myself, also not having the music immediately related back to me allowed me to take more risks, I tried to address my aversion to melody and upper frequencies and as a result the EP is almost definitely my favourite to date, make what you will of it, I’m genuinely proud of it and that’s the first time I’ve been able to say that about my own music.
This is my third or fourth attempt to get this into words, I’ll continue to work on it. I have far too much to say and don’t have the neurological organisation to get it into words. I have about 2000 words on gender, the idea of the internet avatar, identity and the validity of the physical self in the future but it’s not good enough to post yet. Maybe look up some of those topics and come to your own conclusions. I’d like to thank Zoe Jellicoe for being a good sport and letting me borrow her face, and White Collar Boy for letting me use their studio. Click on the picture for DL of the EP.
