WATCH: Kitzl – Wizard Girls
Canadian producer and composer Kitzl has released the video for “Wizard Girls” taken from her album 40 Moons That We Know Of (April 2019), mastered by Michael Fong (Ryuichi Sakamoto, Electric Youth).
The video premiered on Clash Magazine, and the up-and-coming ambient pop-creationist has garnered support from CBC’s Radio 1’s The Key of C show hosted by Craig Norris, and wowed audiences at Hillside Inside Festival, and Kazoo! Fest in her native Canada. She has seen substantial media support, including features in Canadian Beats, New Noise Magazine, Ride The Tempo and Aesthetic Magazine.
Hailing from Guelph, near Toronto, Kitzl began writing and recording music as a teen, drawn to electronic music production as a means to explore ambient and soundtrack music. Her mother and extended family originally hail from West Bromwich in England, with much of the family staying within the United Kingdom. Kitzl blends organically derived sounds and samples – such as the sounds of gates, pottery, and branches to give strange, dirty textures to her work, and populates it with the voices of coyotes, frogs, crickets and birds alongside layers of her own light vocals. These elements are manipulated and crafted into new life, as she reverses them, distorts them and slows them down – or uses them as-is in their natural sonic glory.
Inspired by the likes of Baths, The Knife, Empress Of, Asgeir, Sigur Rós, M.I.A, Bon Iver, Four Tet, Phosphorescent, SolarSolar, Imogen Heap, and José González, each piece of Kitzl’s music is emotionally rooted in humanoid experiences. Instrumentally and lyrically it might bring up images of anthropomorphized planets and objects, as well as imaginary races of probably non-existent life-forms. There is subtle conflict in Kitzl’s work and aesthetic. It’s a disquieted feud between a playful, child-like wonder, and a darker, more displeased bitterness at something. Enigmatic in genre, Kitzl’s sound draws parallels to that of her contemporaries such as Grimes and Regina Spektor.
Eschewing categories, “Wizard Girls” is a shining offering, combining elements of ambient-electronic-pop, art pop, and experimental shoe-gaze into one remarkably cohesive whole. A humane glow envelops the track rendering quixotic sketches into tangible, hook-heavy electro-pop – beautifully conceived and executed. The glow is reflected in the video with a purple haze across most of it. Creatures with glowing eyes appear just over halfway through, reflective of the ‘watchers’ within a fashion show. Their eyes intimidate and entrance the viewer, leaving them feeling like a deer caught in the headlights of a car. You cannot escape them. The music video was directed by Justin Alexis, an up and coming director. There is a fearless, uninhibited confidence to Kitzl’s work, a delightful whimsy which takes her already-arresting sound and expands it to widescreen.
Speaking of the track Kitzl explains: “We filmed it all in Elora and in Guelph, close to home. We were chasing an unearthly, neon forest kind of vibe. In the day the wizard girls laze around and recharge, and at night they get down to business. The night-time stuff was really cool to film because the lights in the dark trees immediately looked so eerie, exactly how we’d hoped. I made a lot of moth friends that night.”
“I reached out to KITZL after being blown away by her live performance. We brought our ideas to the table and created something truly unique and on par with both of our projects.” – Justin Alexis on directing the music video.
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