Ahead of the release of their remix album ‘I<3UQTINVU,’ the London band joins Document to muse on how the making of a song is much like trying out a haircut
Jockstrap operates almost entirely off instinct. I<3UQTINVU—an acronym for I Love You Cutie, I Envy You—is perhaps their most cohesive concept to-date, solely because each track is a remix of a past release. The London duo’s debut album, I Love You, Jennifer B, and the EPs that preceded it were collections only by name, every song within them entirely different in sound, style, and structure.
Some of the tracks on I<3UQTINVU, Jockstrap’s Taylor Skye explains, were made a few years ago; others, more recently—but each over the course of just a single day. All are in keeping with their reputation of eclectic indulgence. “It’s a bit like trying out loads of new haircuts, and not caring how you look,” Skye says of the philosophy behind the forthcoming remix album. “It’s seeing what might happen, and not thinking twice about it. Like, imagine if this was going to be a country song, or a Deadmau5 song. With each song [on the record], I could probably relay a quite clear, pastiche connection to some other sort of music.”
“It’s a bit like trying out loads of new haircuts, and not caring how you look. It’s seeing what might happen, and not thinking twice about it.”
The practice has proved profitable—seeing Skye and Georgia Ellery carve out a distinct path for pop that has earned them fans like Jamie XX and Iggy Pop, stints soundtracking runaways for Chanel and Stella McCartney, a spot among the finalists for the 2023 Mercury Prize, as well as tours across the globe. For its part, I<3UQTINVU turned some notable fans into collaborators, seeing contributions from Babymorocco, Coby Sey, Ersatz, IAN STARR, and Kirin J Callinan. But Jockstrap doesn’t spend all that much time thinking about how they do it all. It’s that instinct that they nurture—to spend time dissecting where it comes from could reduce its efficacy.
Thus far, the band has no regrets in operating on impulse. “It’s like how you hate how you look one day, and then you can love how you look the next day,” Skye offers. Some haircuts may be better than others, but it’s the power of acting on each idea at the crux of it all. After all, as I<3UQTINVU proves, much like hair, any song can be recut and reshaped.
