Knife Girl announces new album CUM & shares new single 'Fragile'

CUM arrives on 17th November 2023 via Soliti/Playground

“A joyous dance groove”

- Paste

“A sleek, metallic and futuristic sound, with bubbling and warped synths that pop and drop like water droplets, and a dark dance-pop attitude that consumes you wholly. It’s a glorious celebration of transness, trans people and their trans friends and trans bodies.”

- Xtra Magazine

“An aggressively positive piece of left-field dance-pop”

- Complete Music Update

Knife Girl, the project of 23 year old songwriter/producer Lili Aslo, has announced that on November 17th she will release her new album CUM via Soliti/Playground. CUM is a deeply personal record centred around Aslo’s experience of sex as a transgender woman. The album sees the ever evolving artist moving away from the indie-rock of her 2022 debut album Uniform, opting instead to straddle the technicolour worlds of hyperpop and dance music.

Alongside the announcement, Knife Girl has also shared one of CUM’s most exuberant and euphoric pop moments, ‘Fragile’.

“‘Fragile’ is about looking for a deeper connection in a casual sex relationship. I wanted to try and express the frustration and pain as well as the lust and beauty of it in this song,” Aslo tells us.

On the themes of her new album, Also explains:

“CUM is about the huge changes I experienced with my sexuality and gender identity upon starting hormone replacement therapy. I wanted to explore those themes of sex and gender in a sincere way without sensationalising or romanticising my experience. Though sex and relationships are lovely, there is a greed and ugliness to it as well. And though my gender expression fills me with euphoria, the fear of violence and hate crimes haunts me daily.

I'm assuming many people will think of this album as shallow and gimmicky without giving it an honest chance. I purposefully named the album "CUM" to provoke those kinds of people. I'm writing songs about sex as an artistic choice, not because it's an easy way out for me. I set out to create an album explicitly from a trans perspective. I also wanted to be openly sexual. I’m proud that I did that.

The album’s sound expands on what I was doing on my OONA EP from 2021, adding more dance elements to it. I produced the songs with the idea of wanting them to be danceable live. The sound design is inspired by some of my favourite producers like SOPHIE and A.G.Cook."

Releasing music under different guises since 2013, Lili Aslo has released 5 EP’s and one album collecting more than 12 million listeners on various music platforms. Knife Girl’s Metro EP from June 2021 caught the attention of tastemakers all over, further cemented by the OONA EP released later that year.

Knife Girl’s growing reputation as a producer and songwriter of adventurous sonic endeavours replenished with special melodic gifts was merely enhanced by her debut album Uniform released in September 2022.

Live shows have grown in stature from solo appearances to full on seven piece band dynamics with Aslo’s endearing personality shining through. The often chameleon-like nature of Aslo’s music has traversed genres such as bedroom pop, hyperpop, classic indie rock and more in an ever expanding and crafted oeuvre. These releases have garnered everything from Emmy nominations (Finnish Grammy) to praise from a wide range of critics such as Crack, The Line Of Best Fit, Paste, Wonderland and many more.