Trip-hop dark pop _{by Madelaine Empson}

Georgia Knight half fell into, half sought out music.

“We didn’t grow up with pop culture much and I envied kids who knew names of celebrities and what was on the Simpsons”, the Naarm-born, now Aotearoa-based artist says. “I went to art school because I was looking for something new, and by the end of it I’d realised if I wasn’t making my best work there, I was making landfill. Music is a lot faster to generate and it’s judged harshly by normal people, which is attractive if you really want to find out what’s good.”

Knight crafts otherworldly pop from autoharp, dusty loops, synth textures, and avant-garde edges. When I ask how she’d describe her music, she says the answer changed yet again when she started working with a new jazz band in New Zealand that pushed her further. “As jazz players they also have to work hard to figure out what I’m trying to do.”

Knight found her sound in a process she calls “the product of living alone in a small, dank apartment in lockdown for two years”. A dull and boring time, compensated for by the drama in her songs.  

Touring her new album Beanpole, described by KEXP as “an evocative set of dimly lit, hypnotic, psych-tinted pop”, Knight will play San Fran on the 12^th of April with support from Mercury Feng. She describes the venue like a big barn and would “love it if someone would spread wood shavings on the floor and we all really lean in”.