If you’re after something heavy, atmospheric, and genuinely experimental, these artists simply never disappoint. We’ve worked with both John Cxnnor and Hiraki across multiple publications and projects over the years, and each time the output carries a weight that’s hard to replicate. Hiraki’s new collaborative release with Meejah, dubbed “Interwoven,” out March 13 on Pelagic Records — a label that consistently delivers the highest quality in both visual identity and sonic experience — is no exception. This one has its own specific gravity, something dense and deliberate that sits with you long after the tracks end.
Both bands are Danish. Both are close collaborators with John Cxnnor. And on “Interwoven,” they’ve fused into something that functions neither as a Meejah record nor a Hiraki record but as a shared space where two distinct artistic identities push against each other, bleed into each other, and refuse to resolve neatly.
The thematic core is the duality between victim and executioner — not as a clean binary, but as something far messier. Tim from Hiraki: “The line between victim and perpetrator is never as fixed as people want it to be. Hurt moves. It gets absorbed, repeated, twisted, and sometimes turned back outward. That felt very real to us, and the core of the whole EP.”
Mai from Meejah approaches it from a different angle: “Innocence and a sense of the spirit always being free in its essence no matter what the person was put through has been in the center of Meejah’s exploration. Also reparation processes and the complexity of how two different stories about the same experience can mirror, dominate or destroy each other.”
Where the two perspectives diverge is where the weight falls. Tim: “Meejah’s angle feels more rooted in the victim’s restoration and the struggle to move through that position and become free of it. Our angle was more about the conscious act of causing harm, and what that does to the person choosing it. The cost of it, and the kind of self-knowledge that can come with realising you are no longer just carrying damage, but acting through it.” He’s clear that this wasn’t about arriving at a shared conclusion. “We met in the mess of it. In the fact that these roles bleed into each other, and that once you start looking closely, the whole thing gets harder to moralise in a simple way.”
That tension runs structurally through the EP. The tracks weren’t designed to feel separate or self-contained. Tim: “They speak to each other, push against each other, and sometimes expose something in each other. One track can feel like a wound, the other like what grows out of it. It was never really about symmetry. It was more about the friction of carrying the same emotional material, but pulling it in different directions.” Andreas from Meejah adds that the musical dynamics mirror the thematic ones directly — the “dominant role” shifts throughout the record as a way of exploring perpetrator/victim power structures in a literal sonic sense. “We also played with melodic and dynamic similarities showing up in different ways across the EP to mimic interweaving fates and changing power dynamics.”
At the center of “Interwoven” sits “Redirect Revenge,” a duet featuring Loïc Rossetti of The Ocean. The story of how that collaboration came to exist goes back to 2022, before any songs were written, before anyone had contacted Rossetti, before the Pelagic signing, before any of it.
Mai was standing at a The Ocean concert at Roskilde Festival, Gloria Stage. In that moment, a flood of themes started downloading — the weighing of the heart, childhood memories of a little black cat she’d lost, bullet holes in the yards of old East Berlin, the Cold War, Europe divided in two like her birth country Korea still is, families still separated, how Europe overcame that history in a few generations. Heavy, layered, personal and geopolitical all tangled up.
And then suddenly someone grabbed her by the shoulders. It was Rossetti, kneeling down in front of her during his own concert. He’d seen her standing front row, deep inside her own head, and wanted to make sure she was okay. “So he asked me twice: Are you okay? I said yes — I couldn’t possibly explain to him what was lining up in my mind — and then he followed up: Are you sure?” His legs were broken at the time. He was performing from a chair, walking with crutches. And still he stopped to check on a stranger in the crowd. “I am not sure he remembers the episode but that really marked an impression on me. Hoping that I could get to ask him to sing the duet with us someday.” The thought that crystallized: “When a man with crutches kneels down in front of you to make sure that you are okay — the world is not lost.”
“Are you okay? Are you sure?” became part of the lyrics on “Redirect Revenge.”
Years later, when the song existed and the collaboration was real, Meejah reached out to Rossetti. He listened to the track and it landed immediately. “It just got me straight away. It sounded great and I was inspired,” Rossetti says. “Then we jumped on a phone call and Mai mentioned Roskilde and I thought ok, she is a very interesting artist. But honestly the song had me way before.” On the duet’s victim/executioner duality: “When you’re in it you just go. I wasn’t thinking about sides, I was just feeling the song. Mai and Meejah took me somewhere I wasn’t expecting and that’s honestly where it clicked. She knows exactly what she wants for the music and that’s rare and I love it.”
The lead singles — “Dead Calls” and “Preserve/Manifest” — arrived ahead of the full release, with a live Tapetown Session for “Dead Calls” and a full music video for “Preserve/Manifest.” The EP was recorded by Meejah and Hiraki themselves, with drum recordings handled by Søren Zahle at Studio Communale and Rasmus Fisker at Blipblop Studio. Mixed by Klaus Q, mastered by Emil Thomsen at Et Mastering. Artwork by Jon Gotlev.
“Interwoven” is available now on Bandcamp and all streaming platforms through Pelagic Records.
