Too Free

Imagine a space where you have the freedom to exist in your own body, with agency and autonomy, the freedom to be loved and reciprocate love at your will. A space where you can be elastic and contour rigidity, where you can articulate a wordless moment. A place you can divine your own ritual. You know this place. You go there every time you hear your favorite pop song, your favorite ballad, your favorite club banger. Music is this space, a sprawling, boundless landscape where we transcend difficulty, we revel in vulnerability, we are our sexiest, most able selves. A place where we not only dream, but dare to visualize our dreams realized, to move alongside them as the as long as the beat goes on. Love in High Demand is music that takes you there. Songs you can jam with your auntie at the cookout then vibe alone with in your car. Kinetic rhythms that move you, bass that shakes you to your core, and vocals that caress you throughout the experience. Music is a place, the space in which Too Free exists.

“Engulf me! Engulf me!” – “ATM”

Too Free is born of the most innate curiosity in Awad Bilal (Big Freedia, Vasillus), Carson Cox (Merchandise), and Don Godwin (Callers, Impractical Cockpit) – their only mission is a desire to connect with others in the space that music creates. Drawing from improvisation and experimentation, they deconstruct their songs to their most necessary elements, leaning into their collective punk ethos and DIY backgrounds. Taking energy that projects a reverence for legacy with the opposite of nostalgia, they lead with a principle of imagining a future and being in it – intentionally making music that skews towards the inclusive and accessible instead of making things insular and pretentious.

“If you wanna be there, you can” – “Touch Upon Touch”

Relying on the power of movement and improvisation, each track on their debut LP, Love in High Demand provides an empathetic space for the listener. Drawing equally from elements of South Florida freestyle and Jersey electro into DC’s signature polyrhythms, the record is a continuous refinement of the virtue of motion – each composition rooted in propulsive energy that envelops.

“Crystallize into whatever” – “No Fun”

Aiming to make something with a more utopian outlook that counters the pervasive pessimism, archaic ideologies and dystopian timelines we interact with on a daily basis, they approach this project with an open-endedness that incorporates higher concepts of what pop art can sound like. A place where the Walker Brothers’ irreverent noir holds the same currency as Guy’s forward-thinking approach to R&B occupy the world where songs like “Gold” and “Wanna Let Me Know” cohabitate.

“Open up the gates. Walk through walls.” – “X2”

Washington, DC is a city built on powerful rhythm and kinetic motion – with plenty of variety in terrain for its compact size. Bursts of lush forest line cross-city parkways as it cradles the intersection of the Anacostia and Potomac, sedimentary waters that give visual flashbacks of the native swamplands it was before. Just like those swamps, Too Free taps into the same primitive and intrinsic sensibilities that shape their landscape.

Identity is a strange and magnificent thing – and when people are given the chance to be their truest, most honest selves – possibilities seem endless.