Two years ago, we introduced you to Liina Magnea, aka MAGNEA, an avant-pop singer-songwriter of Finnish and Icelandic descent who was raised in Berlin. On her menacing new offering, aptly named “stabbing”, she links up with Melbourne’s experimental producer Air Max ’97. “I was alone in the Icelandic highlands and people had been telling me a lot of ghost stories,” she explained. “I asked Air Max ’97 to make a song with me so that I could fill that creepy void with aggressive power and overcome it”.

Magnea and Air Max ’97 are both active members of their local art scene. As expected, the fruit of their collaboration is highly captivating. In the accompanying conceptual video, which was shot by Nathan Ceddia, three dancers are confronting themselves in a very animalistic and visceral way. Brimming with pain and violence, the final rendition could actually depict the complexity and autodestructive mechanism of toxic relationships.

About the real meaning of the video, MAGNEA explained:

[su_quote]The music video for Stabbing is about a compulsive urge for aggression and anger that is mostly destructive but can be playful and freeing at the same time. Rather than seeing the bodies as representatives for genders, they are, just like in martial arts, fighting each other strategically. Like in a nightmare or dream, they find themselves loosing all senses and instead of fighting the other, they are actually fighting themselves. The choice is to make it to an active killing of their inner demons or to a submitting and going into a combat with the external. A vicious cycle, being caught in a nightmare of ones own making.[/su_quote]

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Magnea is the music moniker of Liina Magnea, a singer-songwriter of Finnish and Icelandic descent who was raised in Berlin. We’re happy to premiere the artist’s official debut single “Profil” today. Assisted by Iranian artist Maral Salmassi on production duty, Magnea delivers the body of something that sounds like a pop song but which remains too abstract and to be one. Driven by a two-note bass line which nods to New York vogue ball culture as well as 90s club music, the symbolic song brings us into a synthetic and hypnotic universe that appears both as cold and accessible. As the artist told us, she wants to leave space for interpretation and this can be felt in the accompanying Kristin Von Jarmersted-directed video that seems to depict a mysterious coming-of-age ritual.

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