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PRI//
PRI// is an alternative audio visual artist
Everybody says their music sounds like nothing else around but they're usually lying. In the case of London alternative act PRI//, however, it's a sentiment that rings true. Since the start of 2024 the enigmatic artist has uploaded over 80 songs onto the world wide web, each one a lo-fi symphony squashed into short, sharp bursts of abstracted raw emotion.
Having first started experimenting with music at the tender age of five (“I didn't know any chords or anything,” he laughs), it's taken a while for PRI// to fully emerge. “I have periods where throughout my life I've made music more consistently. And then there'd been gaps where we lived in a flat with really thin walls. So I couldn't really do it.” It was a recent health scare that focused him into forging ahead with music. “It made me realise that this is quite important to me actually,” he explains. “I really need to feel creative and it was a good way to feel like that autonomously. It really ticks that box for me.”
While thin walls may be a thing of the past, so much of PRI//'s music is created within the confines of the practicalities of life. It's what gives it both its familiarity and tension. The self-recorded songs are often made in seven minute snatches in the morning in a small box room, or in five minute bursts during an energy spike at night. Limited in terms of equipment, they are built around electric and acoustic guitars, an “ancient” keyboard and an 80s drum machine that once belonged to Depeche Mode. “I don't think it quite works properly,” he laughs. “I'm very, very limited in terms of what I can do. I'm self-taught on piano and guitar, so it's largely defined by the instruments I have lying around.”
This lo-fi quality, while unavoidable, is also something PRI// is naturally drawn to. “I've always loved hearing other artist's demos. And there's that saying, isn't there; first thought, best thought. I think there's a lot of truth in that. I really like the capturing of that kind of moment. And I feel like there's something in that, that's really honest.” That's not to say the sound won't evolve as time goes on. “Yeah, I mean, if I had access to money and collaborators, I would love to not be lo-fi... But I also sort of quite like that.”
Lyrically, PRI//'s songs focus on both the abstract and the incredibly direct, often on the same song. Songs can be both a dissection of an emotional interior or give the sense of an outsider “looking in at society, or a family, or the suburbs.” Inspired by the directness of lyricists such Lou Reed and Joni Mitchell, mixed with the storytelling of Tori Amos, these are songs that cram a lot in. Some of the singles, inspired by Madonna's remix-heavy maxi singles from the 80s, have also been reworked via off-the-cuff improvisations. “I either take the main melody from the song, which I have written down, and then improvise around it or just completely improvise the whole thing,” PRI// explains. “And that feels almost like reconnecting to the child who made up those songs when he was five. Some of the mixes are really pushing the boundaries, and feel quite mad, but also feel quite cathartic.”
Releasing music has also meant creating a visual world to run alongside it, both on YouTube and TikTok. Again, this has necessitated a more DIY approach but still a sense of ambition runs throughout. “I've always been inspired by visual artists, whether that's Grace Jones or David Bowie or Laurie Anderson or Kate Bush,” he explains. “And I really like those people who can use the artwork as extensions of their songs and their storytelling. There are a lot of artists today talking about 'oh god, I have to make more content', and that's true, but another side to it for me is I just have to answer to myself. So it can actually be quite a fun thing where you're making these sort of weird art videos.”
Weird and wild define the world PRI// creates both in the music and their visuals. It's by giving into those extremes that he's been able to find his own niche. “I feel really inspired by anything that's unexpected so that could be David Bowie or Throbbing Gristle or the Spice Girls. Just stuff that is wild, but it's not just really avant-garde experimental stuff.” It's about capturing the essence of that desire to surprise, or push at a boundary, or to zig-a-zig-ah. “For years and years, I felt like I was just mimicking other people,” he explains. “But now I'm doing something that feels like just me.”
