Knifeplay: The Nerve and the Noise
Knifeplay on transformation, tension, and the kind of beauty that doesn’t flinch.
Philadelphia’s Knifeplay makes music that feels like it’s trying to say something, but the world keeps interrupting. Part shoegaze, part slowcore, part emotional exorcism, their sound has always carried a strange weight. Not heavy for the sake of it, but heavy because the feelings underneath haven’t been trimmed to fit. What started as a lo-fi solo project from songwriter TJ Strohmer has evolved into a five-piece band with a sharper, more expansive vision, and a growing reputation for making music that refuses to rush toward resolution. Their last full-length, Animal Drowning, cracked something open. Their next is threatening to swallow the sky.
In the early years, Knifeplay was more instinct than institution. A private outlet. One person wrestling sound into shape. But over time, that solitary ritual began to shift. The rehearsals grew louder. The trust deepened. And what emerged was something heavier, more collaborative, and far more unpredictable.
“The biggest thing that’s changed for us is that I now bring in the skeleton of the song, and lyrics, and the rest of it is filled out collaboratively by the band. Some songs find me having a heavier hand direction-wise than others; it all varies. But the music we’re making now wouldn’t be possible without the effort of the group, whereas before that wasn’t the case. I don’t record demos at home anymore. We work on them together sometimes, but when we do record, even as a demo, it’s something pretty close to the finished product because we’ve done the pre-production in the rehearsal room.”
This technical shift is philosophical as well. The process has become communal, but the emotional weight is still carried with the same care. The sound might feel bigger now, but it’s still chasing the same flicker of truth.
Letting the song breathe and deciding when to stop
The longest Knifeplay song to date feels like a thesis. “Spirit Echo” stretches close to ten minutes without sagging, a slow spiral of melody and mood that seems built to suspend time rather than follow it. There’s no hook meant to catch you early, no obvious climax to hang your memory on. It unfolds the way a hard conversation does, slowly and deliberately, leaving room for silence to press up against the signal.
“This song represents a middle ground between the process I employed in the early days and the new way of making that I just described. But basically, I had the whole song through the second chorus written and demoed. Later, I wrote the chord progression that would be the long outro section. I knew it fit well, so Max and I sat down and worked that addition out (he composed all of the string arrangements). I appreciate the compliment here, we never set out to make a song a certain length or not. I just take the song to its logical conclusion in my head. It might be too much for some people, but that’s okay with us.”
There’s no performance in the sprawl, no effort to impress with scale. The song breathes in its own time and then closes the door when it’s finished. This is a song that requires reflection rather than applause.
When the live room becomes the writing room
Touring didn’t just test the band’s chemistry. It remade the entire songwriting process. The more Knifeplay played together, the more the songs stopped being studio artifacts and started becoming living things. The rehearsal space turned into a second voice in the arrangement. Ideas got louder, looser, more instinctual. If the early records were sculpted in solitude, the new ones are being carved out of the air between bodies in a room.
“Touring has helped us get locked in as a group both personally and musically; it has validated the new direction we’re taking, which, while that isn’t essential, it’s definitely helpful. I don’t know if I’d say I’m writing with the live show in mind, but because we’re working them out in a room together, we fill them out there, we don’t have to add extra stuff in the box that can’t be done live, although we still sometimes do. Of course, everything I’m describing is mostly reflected in our new music that is unreleased, but the songs from the Live in Seattle LP reflect the ethos, and the studio versions will be a more refined version of what you’re hearing there.”
The tape doesn’t have to capture the idea. The idea has already lived out loud. That shift in energy has made the music feel more volatile, more human, and more ready to bruise.
Writing toward the wound
Knifeplay’s music has always felt like it was orbiting something painful. But pain isn’t the goal. The goal is clarity. Not everything written in blood has to scream. Some of it whispers with more honesty. And some songs, like “Nobody,” become windows to look through rather than walls to slam into.
“A lot of my older material was rooted in nostalgia, or dealing with painful memories and experiences that at the time of their happening, I had no outlet for. But now, I find that my writing is directed at the world in this current moment, or the moment of writing. I have no use for nostalgia anymore; nostalgia is one of fascism's greatest tools. My goal as an artist now is to get further away from my personal life in my songs and touch on things that are more universal, although ironically, I might narrow my audience in the process. I’m not sure. I don’t want a personal narrative to be what drives people to this music; I just want to create a place where folks who are frustrated with the same things I am frustrated with can find catharsis.”
There’s no genre tag for that kind of urgency. The song asks for silence. You listen because the words couldn’t not be written.
Something brutal, something alive
There’s a raw, living edge to Knifeplay’s sound that defies clean classification. It feels unstable in the best way, like it could tip toward collapse or clarity at any moment. That unpredictability isn’t accidental. It’s the product of songs shaped together, face to face, with a deliberate resistance to overworking anything beyond what can be felt in the room. The bruises are audible.
“The song is done when it's done, it's right when it's right, but as someone who is in the middle of finishing a new record that is completely unfamiliar territory compared to our previous work, this is something I might grapple with. I can hear my voice more, and that scares me. Things were done live, faster, and there are more “mistakes.” I want to make something charmingly imperfect, whereas I’ve always been a perfectionist, though our recordings are far from perfect. For me, I just need to strike a certain nerve, and I know it when I hear it, and I/we don’t stop until we’ve reached that spot. I don’t care if it takes 5 years or 10 years or whatever.”
Knifeplay’s new album Live in Seattle is out now. For music and tour updates, visit: