COBRAH
Perhaps more than any artist since the dearly departed SOPHIE, COBRAH's music is suggestive of physical materials. Take the rubbery bassline of "WET", perfectly evoked by its plasticky cover art — a mask hovering halfway between death and kink. Or the slithery "BRAND NEW BITCH", which echoes Benny Benassi's “Satisfaction” and was propelled into wider consciousness by Yorgos Lanthimos' Kinds of Kindness trailer; its artwork shows COBRAH submerged in slime, hair slicked and goopy. For her new album TORN, the title track's cover image resembles ripped muscle tissue rendered in unsettling detail. The corporeal turn makes sense. Where previous EPs like SUCCUBUS were ebulliently focused on surfaces – the slip-and-slide textures of defining rager "GOOD PUSS" a prime example — TORN goes deeper inside: a record of heartbreak, desire, and surprising hurt. Amid the clubby excursions are clues as to who COBRAH really is. "REALLY HARD" was born from a car crash she survived, and it sounds like it: the track has a dazed, disoriented quality beneath its propulsive exterior, impact absorbed and replayed in slow motion. Elsewhere, the album's hard-bodied club constructions crack open to reveal something more vulnerable underneath — desire curdled into longing, pleasure edged with grief. The rips and tears of the album's title aren't just textural conceits but emotional ones. COBRAH has always made music that felt like something you could touch. On TORN, for the first time, it feels like something that could touch you back. Read our interview with COBRAH below.
Matteo Pini You have such a signature sound, but on TORN it feels as if you're stepping into deeper realms on this record. I sense more fear, more pleasure, more anxiety. What shifts were you experiencing during the writing process?
COBRAH I wrote this album with two good friends, with whom I also wrote the Succubus EP. When I started work on the album, I was making more “EP COBRAH”-style music, but it wasn’t feeling particularly new or exciting. I said, Let's just try everything and see what happens: new melodies, different chords, different BPMs. I knew early on that I wanted to present the album as a truer version of myself and the best one I could make, so it took a lot of rewriting and demoing. With a debut album, the expectations from fans are high. With that said, because you get double the amount of space than an EP, an album allows you to be more complex as an artist. I feel like I finally got the opportunity to show my full musical vocabulary.
MP What story would you say you're telling on this record, as opposed to, as opposed to the EPs?
COBRAH For Succubus, I felt I was telling the lore of the succubus. I was really consumed by those tales, whereas this album is much more about my personal experiences. My favourite part of the album is the three-track run in the middle of the album. It starts with “Hush”, which is about the tension between lovers when they first meet. It goes into “Charming”, which is about maintaining a relationship and what you compromise when you’re in love. There are so many elements that are out of my comfort zone in that song: it’s a ballad, and I’m singing. Then it goes into “Dog”, which is about being with a person you envision this life with – moving to LA, getting a dog, progressing in life – and that’s not reciprocated. You’re with someone who just wants to fuck you but doesn’t really want to know you. The last song of the album, “Really Hard”, is about a car crash I was in when I was in Australia. I knew it was always going to be called TORN, because I really like the word “torn,” and I knew the album itself was going to be a big stepping stone and a growing pain in a way. I try to stay very intuitive as a writer, because I feel like the body and the way you create should stay very unanalysed.
MP Your artistic persona hinges around a kind of exaggeration that has been called hypersexual, but I feel is more a kind of boldness.
COBRAH Many people have interpreted my work as hypersexual, and I understand why, but I do think that “boldness” is more the core of who I am, rather than the sex part. I’m always pushing myself: I'm always wearing tighter corsets and higher heels and bigger chains. I put myself in very extreme positions because I love the thrill of doing that.
MP Is there a thrill in discomfort for you?
COBRAH Massively. I come to every shoot, and I think, I'm never gonna do this awful thing again. Then I do it the next day and the next day and the next day! I don't feel like I've given it my all unless it's very uncomfortable. There's the pain in what I like. If it's cold, if it's uncomfortable, if it's hard, if I don't sleep: it thrills me to view it as an extreme sport that I'm trying to master or set a new high score in.
MP “Brand New Bitch” was featured in the Kinds of Kindness trailer. How has that increased exposure for you?
COBRAH When Yorgos used my music, I was so grateful. When I was young, I met this guy on the first day of music school, and he invited me to the movie club he hosted with his friends. They showed The Lobster, which is a Yorgos film. I see him every month, so it was such a full circle moment when I told him I was in Yorgos’ next movie.
MP How do you think about the combination of imagery and music? Which comes first when you are creating?
COBRAH They come together. I'm a very visual person, so I like to imagine what the video is going to look like while I'm creating the song. If I know I’m in the sauna, or at the club, or in the mountains, or it's freezing outside, all of those ideas help me construct the song. This album has always felt very cinematic. It was partly inspired by what I watch on TikTok, compilations of movie clips with a song playing in the background. I always get so emotional when I see them, and I wanted to make a song that could be used in that way. It's weird to have inspiration from TikTok, but I think you can. I hope one day that I can do some acting as well. I'm really intrigued by it.
MP You've got a massive tour coming up. What can we expect?
COBRAH I'm really excited to talk about it. The whole reason I got into music was because I love performing. I thought I was going to be one of those artists who had their music written for them, but I felt like I was forced into songwriting. For the tour, I’m working with the same people that I work with on the music videos, who are also my good friends. In the past tours I've done, because I don't have that big of a discography, I've had to play all of my songs, so I’m excited to just focus more on the album for this tour. I'm bringing two dancers with me and I hope to make a really clubby show, but one that has some depth to it, because it is such a cinematic album.
MP What's the most ridiculous situation you found yourself in while on tour?
COBRAH On tour, every day is a ridiculous situation! When I was doing a show at Heaven in London, I needed a visa for my tech equipment because of Brexit. I had to get up at 5am and stand in line for four hours with the truckers declaring all their groceries. All they did was sign a piece of paper, and then we could drive away! I had interviews all day in different outfits, and it was just a very long day. There was one situation in the US, where I was in San Francisco and the bus broke down, but no one in the crew told me. My work day finished at around 3am and the crew sat me down. They said, Cobrah, the bus is broken and you’re playing LA in less than 12 hours. If the bus doesn’t get fixed in two hours, you’ll have to get a flight. So go to bed in the bus, and if you feel it moving in the next two hours, you’re safe to go to LA. If it's not, you have to wake up and take a flight, and none of your equipment will join you. I remember lying there in the bus, trying to sleep, praying and wishing that the bus would move and it eventually did. The bus driver fixed it because no mechanic could work at 4am in the morning. That was a good story!
TORN is out now.