Miss Grit

Miss Grit — the New York-based, Korean-American musician Margaret Sohn (they/she) — presents “Lain (Phone Clone),” the new single/video from their forthcoming self-produced debut album, Follow the Cyborg, out February 24th on Mute. On “Lain (Phone Clone),” Sohn balances vast pop elements, cinematic atmospherics and textures with blasts of squealing guitar. Inspired by Serial Experiments Lain, Yasuyuki Ueda’s anime about a girl whose online self attempts to drag her physical self away from reality, “Lain (Phone Clone)” presents a chilling moment when Sohn sings, “I don’t want to see everything anymore.” They comment, “I feel like the divide between my inner and outer self can grow so big sometimes that it feels like I’m being eclipsed by this big cringey monster. I wanted to write this to mock the monster and remind myself I’m not powerless against it.”

Across Follow the Cyborg, Miss Grit pursues the path of a non-human machine, as it moves from its helpless origin to awareness and liberation. At times gentle and sparse, at others volatile and explosive, Follow the Cyborg occupies a sonic world of electronic experimentation and stirring electric guitars. It was recorded mostly in solitude in Sohn’s home studio, with the exception of a few guest collaborators joining: Stella Mozgawa of Warpaint, Aron Kobayashi Ritch of Momma, and Pearla.

Miss Grit’s impetus to conceive an album about the life of a cyborg stems from their own connection to this way of existing. As a mixed-race, non-binary artist, Sohn has always rejected the limits of identity thrust upon them by the outside world, instead favoring an embrace of a more fluid and complex understanding of the self. Hailed by Rolling Stone as an “inventive, incisive singer-songwriter,” their process is introspective, their vision precise. In Follow the Cyborg, Sohn subtly and overtly refer to films, including Her, Ex Machina, and Ghost in the Shell, plus essays by Jia Tolentino (from Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion) and Donna Horroway’s A Cyborg Manifesto.

“Lain (Phone Clone)” follows the “beguiling and elastic” (Stereogum) single “Like You,” with its precise, slowly building electric guitars and bold basslines performed by Zoltan Sindhu, as well as the title-track “Follow the Cyborg,” praised by Pitchfork for its “adrenaline high” and “electronic dissonance.”

Next month, Miss Grit will perform a pair of album release shows in New York and Los Angeles, with more dates to follow. Tickets are on sale now.