Back in 2016, I picked up Kim Gordon’s memoir Girl in a Band in paperback from a shop at LAX, one of those airport inter-zones selling travel adaptors, snacks, and all sorts of ephemera that satiates your typical traveller with everything to prove they’ve been away – from fridge magnets to trinkets. Placed on a table in the sprawling book section, Gordon’s autobiography stood out for being both an outlier and genius intervention. I spent my dollars and read the book on the flight home, burying my fingers into the cover and leaving a warped and creased patina when we hit a breeze over north Wales that shook the plane. My trip ended only when I turned the last page, back in London.

Los Angeles, where Gordon grew up and where she has since returned after years on the east coast – from the 80s to the 00s being figuratively associated with New York – is sprawling through Gordon’s solo records. Her new album The Collective is a searing work nobody anticipated and one which today’s world deserves, dismantling the never-ending barrage of information and content we face daily, as our lives are assaulted by algorithms. With Justin Raisen, a producer who makes beats for the likes of Lil Yachty, Gordon has made a trap album / the trap album of the year / the album of the year – the ripples echo – instantly cementing itself as a future reference. Like Fleetwood Mac for society’s en-masse breakdown.

Listening to Sonic Youth, the most crucial and influential American band seeing out the 20th century, the energy Gordon gave off was palpable; colossal, radiant and abiding. Time – and her own perfervid discography, deeply rooted in the improvised, dissonant and sprawling, beyond her own solo studio records – has further attested this power. There is quiet. But only either side of guitar feedback. Meaning simply the amps must be off, the stage empty, the show over.

Gordon has been a visual artist, using the term Design Office, since the dawn of the 80s. The reality is she has never been a musician, but instead an artist that makes music. In this way she and Yoko Ono shake hands.

It’s a small legend that in the 90s, Gordon founded the fashion brand X-Girl with her friend Daisy von Furth, and held a catwalk on the NY sidewalk, minutes away from where her friend Marc Jacobs was having a show. Chloë Sevigny closed as the bride – turning the couture tradition on its skateboard – and Sofia Coppola helped with the staging. Gordon became, and remains, a fashion icon because she brings all the brilliant qualities about her to clothes. When she wears something, it’s like she’s recharging it somehow.

Despite her history, Gordon twists away the rear-view mirror, ceaselessly mining conviction from the moment, not the past, like all compelling artists. It’s how she finds herself – or rather we find her – the most innovative rapper of 2024.

The Collective is the record the world deserves right now, don’t you think?

Yes, in a way… I heard some lovely song on the radio, some female singer, and it was a good song but I wondered in another time would I feel more about it? I remember when I heard the first Cardi B single, Bodak Yellow, I was like, ‘Wow, who is this?’ There’s something about her voice that had this punky urgency to it that I hadn’t heard in a long time from anyone. And it actually kind of inspired me to make my first record [No Home Record] – even though it doesn’t sound anything like her [laughs].

The Collective is a very bassy trap record. You’re transposing that image of you with your Gibson and crushing it.

I mean, I’m only doing what comes naturally to me, beats aside. I’ve always been drawn to or inspired by rhythm in music more than melody because I don’t have a lot of that range [laughter] but also it just sounds more modern to me.

Have you heard from any rappers?

Justin [Raisen] was saying that the rappers he knows like were kind of… their mind was being blown, or maybe that’s his fantasy, I can’t tell [laughs]. I know there’s a couple of guys on TikTok that are super into the record, especially the first single [Bye Bye].

Last summer you had an exhibition at 303 Gallery, of which your painting The Collective, with its twenty-something iPhone-sized holes, was the centrepiece. Were things simultaneous?

I actually finished the record at the end of last April, and we mastered it on my birthday. Twig Harper showed me these pictures he took at a Body/Head gig and I thought the one with the lone iPhone held up in a crowd looked kind of haunting in some way, so I decided to use it and title it The Collective. Then I had the small show where I had done those paintings. Who knows what goes on in the brain? I cut into them with the iPhone shape and it seemed I was doing that before I decided to title the painting The Collective.

And it relates to an algorithm?

Yes, a book called The Candy House by Jennifer Egan. It’s about this man who basically rips off someone else’s research about algorithms. This person had developed algorithm technology to the point where you could make people do things – which isn’t so far from what it is already. He made an app where you could access the memories or life experiences from anybody who’s part of the collective, be in their body and feel what they were feeling. But to do it you had to upload your own memories and experiences too, thus becoming part of the collective. Each chapter’s pulled from a different person. You don’t need to know it to enjoy the record.

Talking of algorithms, what comes up on your Instagram discover feed?

Dogs [laughs]. Australian Shepherds, puppies, things like that.

Your Flung series is one of the pleasures of Instagram, and has found a place as the antidote to Get Ready With Me videos. How did it begin?

I had done an installation where I’d laid some stockings in the gallery and I liked the way they evoked this feeling that something happened; there’s a sense of the body but you never see the body. Then I was asked to do a collaboration with Simone Rocha [for Studio Voltaire]. She sent some clothes and I flung them and took pictures. So the first ones were kind of arranged and then just walking around on the street I would start taking pictures of things. Periodically I remember – the other day I started doing it again. 

You play your first show as part of the tour tomorrow. How does someone who’s synonymous with improv handle rehearsal and creating an experience of The Collective?

Well, it’s been really hard work, I have to say. I don’t think I’ve ever worked on anything as hard as this. Because the record’s very complicated and I feel like people have… you know, there’s an expectation about it sounding like the record, which normally I feel like you have to forget the record when you play live, which is something that we discovered in Sonic Youth. With this record there are a couple of different kinds of sounds that make the whole sound: this sort-of crunch, kind-of ripped sound on the top and then lots of low end. I’m playing with the same people as the last tour and they’ve made new parts but there’s also some sampling from the record and some sounds on backing track that we just can’t possibly recreate. It’s like a crossword puzzle or something. I normally hate rehearsing but I really like these women [Sarah Register (guitar), Camilla Charlesworth (bass), Madi Vogt (drums)] so it’s been actually fun. A friend of mine, Alex Hubbard, who’s an artist has done a film for our projection which should be interesting, kind of dark psychedelic or something.

How have your band bonded?

We played pickleball a few weeks ago. Really I think you bond from playing music together. On the first tour Madi got Covid and we found out two hours before the show, so the three of us just did a totally improvised set and I didn’t say anything to the audience. They were really into it [laughs].

You mentioned Cardi B, are any other pop stars interesting to you at the moment?

I like Rihanna.

You’ve just done a curation for Galerie, the online film club. I really like the way you talk about sound in film or rather think about it, you have these observations that other people often haven’t picked up on.

Sound can just ruin a movie for me. I went to see Oppenheimer and the music was so loud for one thing, and the sound effects… there’s so much detail of names and dates and things like that but you couldn’t really hear what was going on. The New York Times wrote a whole article about that, so it was really surprising to me that it won all these awards. At the same time, The Zone of Interest I thought had incredible sound design, it was amazing. I feel like that in so many American films the music is always too loud.

Bill [Nace] and I – Body/Head – actually gave a song to Catherine Breillat, who’s one of our favourite filmmakers. Our name came from a book about her work. Catherine uses hardly any music in her films, no soundtrack, though sometimes she’ll have something incidental. Her music supervisor contacted me and I sent these four songs from this EP we had just done. She ended up really liking one of them [Tripping] and using it in the film [L'Été dernier]. Which was an honour.

Sonic Youth did a soundtrack for Olivier Assayas’ Demonlover, and it was the only time a filmmaker had sent us dailies and thought of the music beforehand, like another character going through the movie. I always said that was really interesting. We did all kinds of things, like hung microphones out the window… I’d kind of like to rewatch it now. I haven’t seen it in many years. 

KIM GORDON
TEXT DEAN MAYO DAVIES
PHOTOGRAPHY JEANNETTE MONTGOMERY BARRON
FASHION ANDREW SAUCEDA
RE-EDITION #21, SS24
COVER STORY