King Isis
Words and Photographs by Willow Shields
The series of events leading up to my meeting with LA based, Dirty Hit signed, indie superstar- in-the-making King Isis were quite out of the ordinary, but quite good for this writer’s lack of story-telling ability.
The story is a fun one. But it begins, I have to admit, at a very bleak time for the music industry and the world. During a May weekend, a multi venue festival was held named The Great Escape in Brighton, and everyone who was anyone was boycotting it, due to the festivals’ ties to Barclays bank and their subsequent financial ties to israel’s historical, genocidal bombardment of Palestine. Many punters decided to just... not attend, it was simple. Free Palestine, don’t pay to go to The Great Escape. For most artists though, it was a different story. Being locked into contracts, being threatened with being blacklisted by TGE’s organisers, fear mongering from management teams. Having absolutely no way to navigate this dark situation without looking, or feeling, like a terrible person. Then, there was a movement within the Brighton music scene of venues, event organisers and magazines putting on shows to raise money for Palestinian charities, every day more shows were being announced. An alternative for people who wanted to see music that weekend but didn’t want to support the festival due to aforementioned atrocities, and for artists who were locked in to contracts, or had been threatened by management/ event organisers or in King Isis’ case travelled from the USA and, I imagine, had a particular Visa tied to certain contracts. All very difficult morally and emotionally. So, we have a festival tied to an extremely current and very real genocide, artists being forced to play it, hoards of bands dropping out day by day, some making statements on why they can or can’t, and even some saying theyll drop out and then playing it anyway. The Public Relations offices are in shambles, the management teams who aren’t forcing their artists to play are scrambling, and the bands and artists who can are playing up to 10 fundraiser sets a day. And one of those artists was King Isis, who played a show at Rossi Bar for us and stayed to chat with me for 20 minutes, which included a hasty walk down to The Dome and back accompanied by partner and tour manager Flynn. The rest of their three days in the UK was playing back to back sets.
We found a perch on a curb connecting to a flower garden in the grounds of Brighton Dome, next to the venue entrance and opposite the museum. One of us was sweating from the May heat, it was probably fifteen degrees, and it was me that was sweating. So I decided to open my line of questioning with where, mentally, I was focussed; “What is your favourite type of weather?” Taking a moment to glance around in a way akin to an angel who had just got to earth, which says a lot about how King Isis carried themself, the answer was simple, down to earth and charming as hell, “My favourite type of weather is probably this, you know, California has got me a little spoilt with this heat.” Slightly stunned by their ability to make California weather sound like the most interesting thing I had ever heard, I quipped “How often does it rain in California?” To which they replied, “Um, I’m from San Francisco Bay Area so it rains for probably three months. December, January, November-ish but right now I live in LA so it really doesn’t rain. We had like two weeks of really heavy rain and everyone was freaking out.” After various giggles from me because it felt as if the coolest person in school was allowing me to talk to them, and being nice to me, I asked “If you were a sandwich what would you be?” They let out a sigh and a giggle, “if I were a sandwich? I think that I would be...Ciabatta bread, you know? Soft, with a little bit of a crunch to it if you toast it. With some brie, and some mango jam. Sweet but also savoury. A little bit of everything. And tiny, so you keep wanting more of it.” I feel I need to address the effortless coolness that King Isis excludes from every pore, at this stage, they aren’t standoffish, or high and mighty, it’s more a sense of cool that draws you into them. Like a siren or a fairy, they leave you hanging on their every word and it’s not even on purpose.
After being “apprehended by a plant” aka me leaning back into some leaves, I began my next line of questioning while feeling like an utter buffoon in front of the artist I was interviewing. “Context: I recently had a discussion with my best friend in the whole world and we realised that we’d never asked each other like kid questions, like we never knew what our favourite animals were or our favourite colours were. So, I’m gonna ask you what your favourite animal and colour is,””Favourite colour to wear? Is black, but just to look at is probably like a light blue or a light pink, the sky colours really. But definitely to wear, black.” “Oh and the animal, I’m not too sure what my favourite animal is. I’m gonna say: an owl, a unicorn or a cat.” After complimenting their choice of animals, I started on my slightly more ‘serious journalist’ aspect of the interview, or ‘boring questions’, “King Isis, why King Isis?” “My name is Isis, it’s my birth name and then my great-great grandma, her name was Omega King so I wanted to incorporate her name somehow. I was thinking between Isis Omega or King Isis. But King Isis, I just felt like it flowed better. And also one of my favourite artists [is] King Krule, but [it’s] not because of him but I do love King Krule. She was one of the first Black opera singers in Chicago so, she’s like one of the first women in my family to do music, so just keeping in the family sort of thing. So that’s why. And I wanted to have my name in it but there was a band called Isis, so I couldn’t just be Isis.”
“I have done no research on you,” is something I actually said during this interview, living proof of the most professional journalist folks. However, I do sometimes find it useful to do zero research because then I, as a person, am enthralled by learning about the interviewee. Most professional way to ask a question, go: “So, Dirty Hit. Is that fun? Is that nice? Is that cool?” Yeah, not so professional. However King Isis’ answer was. “It’s definitely fun, and nice, and cool. Before I got signed I had released a really small, like, three track project on my own so I had like no team of any kind. No manager, no nothing. So I was reaching out to a bunch of blogs and publishers and stuff and just trying to get people to, like, write about it. I spent literally like hours and weeks just reaching out and researching emails. But one of the people I contacted was Jacob Moore at Pigeons & Planes which is like a music discovery blog. And he was like one of my main targets so I was like ‘he’s never gonna reply, let me just shoot my shot anyway.’ And he wrote back real quick, like within three minutes, really on it. He liked the music, and so he shared one of my covers and we kept talking after that. Some months went by, I went to New York which is where he’s based, and he started doing a joint partnership, or like a joint venture, with Dirty Hit with his label No Matter. So over the course of like nine months after talking to Jacob, I eventually met Jamie who owns and runs Dirty Hit. That is how that happened. I love it, it’s honestly really great having support and having a team, having people care about the music. Also I feel like most of the artists that they have are like alternative, so I feel like they understand my sound and what I’m trying to do and, you know, just... they understand it because that’s their focus. So that’s really nice. Before I was doing everything out of pocket with money. I was working five jobs and using most of my paychecks aside from rent to fund my music career, just hoping it would go somewhere. Also that I love it, but also hoping it went somewhere. So it’s nice to have people supporting, and people to talk to and just build up the vision and world. It’s really nice, it’s helpful.” “So five jobs... not that we love to work because capitalism is a scam, but what has been your favourite job? Except being a musician.” “One of my favourite jobs I guess was one of those jobs, I would do wardrobe assisting sometimes which is pretty fun. It’s still pretty long days, it was like 12 hour days. But it is really fun, just like dealing with clothes and dressing people. That was fun though, I’ve worked so many random ass jobs though so some of them have been not so great. That was probably my favourite, and then art assisting on set too, just making sure everything looks pretty. Those were fun jobs.” And finally, still on the job market as a question topic I asked, “When you were a kid, what did you want to grow up to be?” “I wanted to be a musician. That’s always been the dream, always the goal. Yes, that’s the dream, always been.” After that I kind of wanted to cry. Because I was sitting on a curb in the baking heat surrounded by beautiful plants and tourists. And I was facing King Isis, living their childhood dream.