We’re pleased to bring you the premiere of post-punk/darkwave duo Foxxxy Mulder hypnotic and mesmerizing first single “Ghost“, track taken from the their debut album Heretic, due to be released on September 21th.
Foxxxy Mulder are Kori Hensell and David Kumler. Kori lives in Fairbanks, AK, and David in Seattle, WA. Since 2016, the duo have been making music together via long-distance collaboration, sharing files over the internet, adapting, revising, and reworking songs little by little—all with 2000 miles between them.
The first single from the album, “Ghost,” will be released via the Paranoia Musique Vol. 4 compilation on August 24, listen to it below.
“This song, and really Heretic as a whole, emerges largely from my academic work. I’m a PhD student in literature and cultural studies, and my dissertation is on, basically, occult horror. I read a book recently by Sylvia Federici called Caliban and the Witch. In this book, Federici examines the intersections between the European witch trials of 16th-18th centuries and the advent of capitalism. Her argument is that witch persecutions played an important role in relegating women to the home–to the role of childbearing and reproducing a workforce for capitalism. Without defining gender roles in this way, Federici argues, capitalism wouldn’t have been able to function. I find this cultural-political history to be important, particularly at a time when both capitalism and so-called traditional gender roles (and the violences they enable) are being questioned, often in ways that intersect and overlap.
“Ghost” tells the story of a women executed for witchcraft returning to haunt her murderers. The guilts of the past have manifested in the form of a ghost, and, in that sense, the song is something of a classically gothic tale. On the other hand, though, the song is very much about our present moment. In the 1960s a radical feminist collective called W.I.T.C.H. (Women’s International Terrorist Conspiracy from Hell) formed, using the iconography of witchcraft to critique and attack capitalist patriarchy. They more or less dissolved with the 1960s counterculture, but in the past few years, W.I.T.C.H. groups have again been popping up all over the world. The symbol of the witch is, once again, gaining an explicitly political cultural currency. Importantly, for these groups, the figure of the witch is both a persecuted figure and a figure of power. That’s what the song “Ghost,” for me, is really about: It’s about the return of the persecuted as a terrifying and powerful entity. In her spectral form, she haunts the powers that be with visions of a different world.” – David Kumler comments the new single.
Foxxxy Mulder will self-release Heretic on digital, cassette, and vinyl formats September 21.