“Ice is diamonds. Ice is loneliness. Ice is coldness. Ice is isolation. Ice is a lot of bad things – and I think I was feeling those things.” When Iceboy Violet adopted their arctic alias, it was more than just a moniker. “I’m very shy,” they explain. “I have a pathological aversion to embarrassment, which is not good – as a performer, or as a person.” And so, the Manchester-based musician became Iceboy Violet, a conceptual character allowing them a fictitious frozen shield to hide behind, and a glacial scaffolding for their artistic-exploration.
Over time, Violet has surpassed the need for that veil, and Iceboy – the character – has been shed as they’ve released a string of albums to critical acclaim, crafted visceral performances that have toured as far as Chengdu, China, and been touted for British artist Mark Leckey’s recent exhibition at Margate’s Turner Contemporary. But the ice is yet to melt. “Sometimes I try to write songs without mentioning any temperature, and I always fuck it up. It’s just there.”
Ice remains a recurring motif in Violet’s work, and a fertile framework for their creativity. “It’s change, it’s fragility, it breaks, it melts,” they explain. “It obfuscates, but you can see through it. It drips.” They could as easily be describing their own music, a broken blend of club music, drill, noise, bass, dub and grime, with lyrics that traverse heteronormativity, mental health, and class disparity – eschewing the hyper-machismo of more traditional rap they grew up listening to. It’s a perfect and pertinent description of their 2020 ‘Drown to Float’ EP, a collection of deconstructed and ambient trap edits complete with ethereal echoes of Young Thug and Gunna, initially inspired by dj lostboi’s transcendent rework of Lil Uzi Vert’s ‘XO TOUR Llif3. “I just thought that track was perfect,” they say. Infatuated with the guitar loop in Lil Baby and Gunna’s ‘Drip Too Hard’, which they had on repeat at the time, Violet started experimenting with recontexulisation, resulting in ‘Eyes Drippin 2 Hard’, that took the sample to new depths of serenity.
Violet has released several projects since then: 2022’s ‘The Vanity Project’ which saw them rapping on beats produced by Space Afrika and Slikback, a second set of ‘Drown 2 Float’ edits, and last year’s ‘Not A Dream But A Controlled Explosion’, released on Rainy Miller’s Fixed Abode imprint, a confident outpouring marking Violet’s first time rapping and producing a full project. At times caustic, other times comforting, Violet’s sound combines soft melancholia with abrasive urban grit. It evokes Burial in its spectral sampling, and a ghostly Spaceape-esque Sprechgesang, rendered in Violet’s distinctive Northern twang.
But ‘Drown to Float’ remains foundational, and it’s the work that indirectly gave birth to the artist’s new album, a collaboration with Barcelona-based producer nueen, released on Hyperdub this June. “When I stumbled across ‘Drown to Float’, I was blown away,” the Catalonian-native explains, “it influenced me a lot in the development of my own sound.” And the feeling was mutual. When Violet heard nueen’s more constructed ambient ‘Link’ EP, they felt compelled to reach out, and so began a blossoming kindredship, and the process of creating what would become ‘You Said You’d Hold My Hand Through the Fire’. Like Drown to Float, which Violet created as a way of “lessening the immediate impact [of a romantic split] – and to distract myself,” their new release is also a breakup album – traversing the tender and turbulent terrain of a four year relationship.
Though all the elements of wistful and introspective contemplation were present in Violet’s ambient works, the Iceboy of their #EskiGoth SoundCloud era had never anticipated writing rap lyrics, nor becoming a performer. And neither, they say, did their family. “I was really, really self conscious – I don’t think anyone I knew growing up would have thought I’d be doing this.”
Now based in Manchester, Violet describes themself as being “ambiently” from West Yorkshire, where they spent their childhood soundtracked by J Dilla and Madlib. Their hip-hop production began at 18, when, stuck in a rut of playing League of Legends (“very embarrassingly”), but failing to make it pro, they started sampling different records they bought at the market. “I was really depressed, basically, and wanted something that could give my life a bit more meaning,” they explain. “I wanted to live a bit more outwards.”
And what began with “typical boom-bap instrumental beats”, quickly metamorphosed on meeting Julian Jaschke, with whom they now run Manchester-based label and collective Mutualism. “He opened my ears to the weirder sounds that are out there,” they explain. “He showed me the links between hip-hop and experimental electronic music.” The discovery catalysed a process of digging out of the hip-hop box, where they unearthed Arca, Actress and Holly Herndon, and the experimental electronic and instrumental grime of Mr. Mitch’s Gobstopper and Boxed Records. It was around that time that Violet also began immersing themself more in nightlife – Wire in Leeds, and Manchester’s Soup – before finding real affinity at The White Hotel, attending Fiction and Hesska’s C.I.T.S nights, and seeing artists like Lorenzo Senni with Theo Burt. “I was just really hungry for variety – I kind of went everywhere.”
Their 2018 debut, ‘MOOK’, was a testament to this newfound sonic adventurousness. The experimental noise EP, released on Madjestic Kasual’s TT (formerly Tobago Tracks) dredged Dizzee Rascal reverbs and subversively overlaid them with homophobic MC slurs. “There’s quite a lot of fun for me in refocusing,” Violet explains. “And taking lyrics out of context to communicate something else.”
Within its tracks, Violet also revealed their own rapping, having begun penning their own lyrics, at first not for cathartic release, but again as a kind of character – a way to fight the uncomfortable feeling of playing static shows standing behind a desk. “I felt super exposed. I felt not in control, I felt bored, and I felt like the audience were bored too.” Having witnessed aya’s confrontational and engaged way of performance, Violet was inspired to pick up the microphone. “The first couple shows were just me playing noise music and screaming, because I didn’t really have anything to say.” Over time, though, that shifted into more intentional and intimate lyrical poetry. “It came out of a need to perform in a different way.”
What’s clear from their trajectory since then is that Iceboy Violet definitely has something to say. Through a flow of fragmented thought patterns and evocative metaphors (that Pitchfork described as “a tumultuous stream of images almost too fast to keep up with”) Violet’s words pierce, punish, cherish and console. ‘You Said You’d Hold My Hand Through the Fire’ sees them turning pain and pleasure into poignance, citing Adrienne Lencker’s tender prose as a major source of solace and inspiration. “After the breakup, I immediately fell into a lot of singer-songwriter, single voice and guitar music. The simplicity and nakedness of it resonated with me, the softness.”
The creative process unfolded over a three months – the intensity of which is apparent in Violet’s raw emotions, syncopated by Nueen’s hazy production influenced by dub techno and the trap of Lucki and THOUXANBANFAUNI. “The intention was to fuse these two worlds,” Nueen explains, “the rhythmic patterns and cadences of hip-hop with the grime, textures, and monotony of Basic Channel and Maurizio.” Thriving on a high-output production approach, Nueen would send over three-four different beats every week, allowing Violet to “write and rap, refine, or discard – just, like, get it out.” The result is a romantic and mesmeric outpouring that, in spite of its inherent suffering, emanates a sense of redemption and healing. The album will premiere with live performances at Sonar in Nueen’s Barcelona in June, before the White Hotel in Manchester – a kind of dual homecoming for both artists.
Laying the soul bare for public consumption can be a cathartic or terrifying concept, and for Violet it’s been both. “It was an incredibly intense situation for me to be dealing with this breakup, but not necessarily sitting with it. Like, I already tried to turn it into something else.” Fortunately, though, music is the one place where their self-confidence is unwavering. “I don’t have this with any other aspect of my life,” they explain, “but with music, I really don’t care what anyone thinks about it. It’s really nice if people like it. It’s really really nice if people get something out of it, but no one is gonna tell me that my music is good or bad in any meaningful way other than me – the only opinion that really matters is my own.”
It’s a liberating realisation, quieting the voices of anxiety, conquering inhibitions, and fully inhabiting a confident incarnation that was once a character. And the way Violet vocalises the feeling they get on stage rings true not only for this album, but their arc as an artist – an icicle slowly defrosting. “I’m solid and unknowable at the start – people have an idea of who I am. But by the end, I’ve exhausted and embarrassed myself… I’ve melted – and become a lot more real in that process.”
Iceboy Violet and Nueen’s ‘You Said You’d Hold My Hand Through The Fire’ is released June 7
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