JULIP: FUZZ, FEELS + FUTURE SOUNDS

PHOTOGRAPHY ERIN HU - WORDS MAISIE JANE DANIELS

julip is the NYC-based self-taught multi-instrumentalist, coder, producer - an artist who makes you question where the limits ever were. In her viral videos, she transcribes code into melody with nothing but hand gestures and intention, bridging the digital and emotional in a way that feels part science, part spell.

But behind the dreamy visuals and glitchy synths lies something beautifully human and defiantly honest. At F Word, we caught up with julip to talk about her latest single Anything at all, the power of duality, and why - for her - music is now less about perfection and more about play. One thing’s clear: this one-to-watch is just getting started, and there are many more sides of julip still left to surface.

Maisie Daniels Julip! Thanks for talking to me today. I’m going to start off by being really British and asking what the weather is like out there? Because it's hotter than hell in London.

Julip: It's definitely really, really hot here, but I’m using it as an excuse to hang in the AC at my place and work on all of my projects at my big table. It’s a bit meta; the table took 3 days and a pink electric screwdriver to assemble—a true labor of love, and now it’s the medium that fosters the birth of my own coding and music projects. Weird girl moment, but I never shut up about how much I love my big table.

MD: You’ve got AC out there - I just have this huge industrial fan, that’s just slapping me in the face with hot air - we need to get AC over here. I'm gonna go from talking about my fan to your actual, real life fans soon but first, let’s go back to the beginning. When did you first know that music wasn't just a hobby and that you had to pursue it.

J: This question kind of makes me laugh because just the other night, some guy asked me if I want to be a “real musician.” Like, I certainly am a musician. Jury’s still out on the “real” part—if anything is. It reminded me of how just a few short months ago, I only had 100 monthly listeners, and in reality, all the circumstances were the same as they are now. I was making music that I loved and playing shows with people I adore. Like, everything internally still feels like I’m in middle school burning CDs and selling them at school. So I’ve never viewed it as okay, I'm now going to pursue this. Making music and “being a musician” has always just been a part of who I am.

MD: Yeah, it sounds like it happened really organically! What came first, the coding or the chords?

J: Definitely the chords. I saw Taylor Swift’s Fearless (Platinum Edition) in a Justice store when I was a kid and begged my mom to buy it for me. That CD piqued my interest in songwriting. I was already playing piano, then picked up guitar, then eventually moved into production. Coding came later. I didn’t know what it was until I picked it up to perfect my Tumblr blog in about 2015. Then, I took AP Computer Science in high school and realised it scratched the same creative itch as music for me.

MD: When watching your hand gesture to code videos I thought, what is this witchcraft!? It blew my mind and it’s obvious that the internet agreed. But how did that visual language come to life with bringing in your hands etc?

J: Like I alluded earlier, coding is one of the ways that I express my creativity, so I’m kind of always fiddling with ideas in the same way that I have a million song demos in my Google Drive. Computer vision is a particularly hot topic in the Computer Science world at the moment, so I was trying to build something related. I originally wanted to leverage the tech to play instruments, but it eventually evolved into being applied to vocal production, which feels a lot more personal and emotional to me.

MD: When you put the first video out there were you nervous about it? Or were you just like, I love this. I'm doing it.

J: Yeah, I felt a mix of things. I had a gut feeling that it would resonate in some capacity, but not to the degree at which it has over the last few months. At first I was afraid of being perceived at that level, but putting myself out there and surrounding myself with loving, positive people has helped me to grow to trust my intuition and detach from the way that others see me—on and off the screen.

MD: Your cover of Imogen Heap’s “Hide and Seek" went instantly viral and I'm not surprised, it was so so good. What was it like the moment you went viral?

J: The first time that I went viral I just wanted to curl up in a ball. It goes against everything that is primal as a human. But, for me, julip and Jewel are two distinct entities—which has its pros and cons. The advantage being that when I go super viral, all of that adoration or hate is sort of scapegoated onto julip, whereas Jewel remains unaffected and clocks into work the next day like nothing happened. This division protects me from interfacing too much with all of the peaks and troughs of going viral and whatnot.

MD: It’s really good that you can recognise all of that. I think that's important. Through a social media snoop, I saw that Imogen Heap invited you to hang out. I need to know, did this happen?

J: Hopefully we’ll get the chance to meet soon. I’m hoping to visit the MiMu office when I’m in London next!

MD: Okay, so I guess it's to be continued! That must have been a special moment as well. But let's talk about your latest track, “Anything at all”. How did it feel to have your song be so highly anticipated by fans, especially after going viral?

J: It’s kind of ironic given the genesis of the song. I first wrote and produced it in my bedroom at an ungodly hour. I think the scratch demo vocal (which is also the final vocal) was cut in my old apartment in San Francisco at 4 A.M. I never bothered to re-record it, and I honestly probably couldn’t recreate that exhausted timbre of my voice in verse 1 at any other time of day anyways. It was the kind of excitement on a creative project that causes you to completely lose track of time and forget to eat, but when I sent it around to my friends, nobody else seemed to share the sentiment. I’ve realised that bending to the will of others when it comes to music is a fast track to disaster for me, so continuing to be authentic to my artistry in the midst of pushback is a huge priority to me. Point is, it meant a lot that a group of people connected with the song, especially given the initial indifference that I received from some of my peers.

MD: Beyond the viral moments there's real musical craft behind what you're doing: you play multiple instruments, you produce everything yourself. Can you pinpoint where that DIY drive came from?

J: Definitely - I have always had a really independent spirit, but I think there are a few things here. One, I grew up in central Florida and there just weren't resources available for me musically - producers and whatnot. So, to an extent, I really had to learn how to do things myself in order to get things off the ground at all. 

The other thing is, though maybe this is a bit tangential, I definitely used to put a ton of pressure on myself to “have it figured out”. I wanted to have the perfect sound, the perfect brand, and the perfect outcome, and I wanted it immediately. Every day that passed without achieving this felt like a reminder that I was failing. But then I had this moment last November that I have lovingly dubbed my “hatch”—because I feel like I literally hatched into a new person. I decided to commit to two things: First of all, I decided to focus on having fun—which has now become a core tenant of the internal julip ethos and a lens through which my team and I make decisions and filter opportunities. But in that moment, it was more about enjoying the ride and embracing the messiness of being a work in progress. The caveat to this—and the yang to the yin that puts the scale at equilibrium—is being extremely action-oriented. Whenever I have an idea or have a task to complete, I get to work immediately. I think my “hatch” has contributed a lot to the DIY spirit because I realised that no manager, label, social media strategist, or producer—or whatever was going to come and pick me out of oblivion, “saving me” from whatever mental blocker I had that made me think I couldn’t execute on my own.

MD: You said that you want to make music feel more accessible, especially for young women in production, in tech. What do you think was missing when you were learning that you now try to offer others?

J: I mean, when I was first learning to code, I was the only girl in my AP Computer Science class. Then I got to college, and out of hundreds of people in the major, there were only a handful of women. Same thing with producing. Even now, it’s really hard to find other women to co-produce with. So just being visible, doing what I do, feels like it matters in a way I didn’t expect. I think younger me would be shocked and inspired to know that I exist. That feels really important to me.

MD: Why do you think there were such few females with you in production and tech?

J: I feel like it’s Big Music propaganda that producing and mixing are hard to learn. Granted, it’s difficult to be a pro at anything—I’m certainly not—but I think a lot of women just feel intimidated to try. I personally went through the fear phase for years before I even attempted. I always tell girls this when they ask for the lowdown on Producing 101: just accept that you’re going to be bad at first and embrace the aspect of it that is playful. Like pretty much everything ever, I think the imbalance is just a perpetuation of the pre-existing structure: Male friend groups tend to bond over traditionally masculine things—the stock market is a great example—which is sort of both the cause and effect for the gap. It’s hard to jump in when nobody’s making space for you.

MD: I feel like you'll inspire, or open up conversations and communities with other females out there that will think: you know what, I can do this. Your sound is so dreamy and soft in recordings, but I've heard you’ve got a raw, gritty punch on stage. Was that contrast, something like you built in intentionally, or did that just happen quite naturally?

J: There are two wolves inside me—one is into shoegaze and and the other is into soft ambient synths. Right now, people mostly know julip for the dreamy stuff, but the grittier side is definitely coming. I’m super inspired by My Bloody Valentine and Radiohead, which will become more apparent as the story unfolds. On the gritty side though, I love the energy and community that comes with playing with some of my best friends live.

MD: I’m excited to watch Julip evolve. There’s a lot bridging opposite worlds at play here: Julip and Jewel, gritty and smooth, softness and structure. Do you see this duality as a real strength?

J: I’m unsure as to whether or not it’s a strength in the commercial sense, since familiarity and being overly referential drives a lot of mass appeal, but the messiness where duality lies is simply who I am and I’ve grown to accept it. For example, for a long time, I felt perplexed by the fork in the road I saw set out in front of me with coding and music. This led to concealing certain pieces of my respective alter egos depending on what room I was in. Now, however, I love that I can represent the many facets that I contain as part of my project, and on a personal level, I view it as a strength that I’ve built something that supports me being my authentic self.

MD: Quick fire round, so logic or feeling?

J: Feeling 

MD: Late night loops or early morning stems?

J: Definitely night

MD: Is there a song, a song that you wish you wrote?

J: Clementine by Elliott Smith

MD: That was a very quick, quick fire! You’ve said music isn't just art (and I love this) it's architecture, emotion and a tool. What do you hope listeners, or, future creatives, take from what you're building?

J: Did I say that? No, I’m kidding.

MD: [Laughs]

J: Honestly, julip is my baby, and I was and would continue to be working on it when and if nobody listened. But if there is a takeaway, I hope it’s something like this: lean into all of the facets of your identity that uniquely form who you are, even if it’s messy or feels contradictory. I obviously come from a STEM background, but I think everybody should be “doing science” as I call it—running little experiments all the time, trying something new, even for just the thrill of doing so. In a way, julip largely feels like an experiment which has unfolded in ways that I never could’ve hypothesized. Once I reframed all of the things that felt hard as an experiment—for example, posting on TikTok—I found that I could approach the challenges with curiosity and through the lens of “play” rather than fear.

MD: Is there anything coming up that we should know about? 

J: Yes! Some things I’m very excited about are on the way. I can't say more yet, but stay tuned.

MD: Well, that's exciting! This is F Word magazine - what is your favourite “F” word?

J: I’ll go with fuzz.

DISCOVER MORE FROM JULIP HERE