By Mila Edensor
Pulsing at the fringes of the fringe is a fiercely independent network of trans POC creators – and a key figure in this pool of artistry is htmljones – someone who gets these events off the ground, and also blesses the room with her own music. In London, people will stumble across a CSM student and think that, in and amongst the weird trousers, they’ve found London’s underground. Little do they know, that’s just a White Bisexual™. The real underground makes itself heard through pitch shifted vocals, frenetic textures and fast-paced beats. htmljones cherishes this genre – and takes it to new heights in her new EP – previewed exclusively by GAY45.
Image courtesy of htmljones
Upon listening, it’s clear that, much like other trans music, this EP is difficult to peg down to a singular genre. It is unmistakably modern, yet also steeped in the aesthetics of the early 2000s and the Internet. The EP, in this light, reflects how it feels to digest the heaviest of emotions through a computer screen, given how much of the trans experience is intertwined with Internet culture.
htmljones’s songs are dynamic. Rapid paced percussion suddenly gives way to whiny synths and aetherial pads. In other tracks on the EP, carnatic runs punctuate dense hyperpop arrangements. A personal favourite of mine is Be Your Fake (ft. holliday howe) – a song that is as irresistibly catchy as it is heartbreakingly raw, (plus, I’m a sucker for a Jersey beat!).
So, htmljones sat down with GAY45 to dive deep into her electrifying new EP, the crackling networks of London’s trans underground, and the intricacies of modern-day trans culture:
Mila Edensor (ME): As an artist you have a super interesting name – what’s the inspiration behind it?
htmljones (HJ): I was initially inspired by JPEGMAFIA, so that’s how I got the name htmljones. That’s what I always say, but because he’s making songs with Kanye now, for the future I’m gonna have to make something up. The next interview I do, my answer will change, okay! But I relate so strongly to JPEGMAFIA because he makes a lot of J-pop beats. Also, you know – he has really hard rap verses about wanting to be a girl (laughs), wanting to be Taylor Swift. His alter ego is called Peggy.
ME: Who are you trying to reach out to with your music? Who do you want to listen to it?
HJ: I think I try to make music without consideration as to who’s gonna consume it. But then that is also a cop-out, because we all exist in a culture, and we’re all picking up different references and styles in the world around us… So I’d say that I make music for the people in the clubs that I go to, people in the queer scene in London. I make music for people who like my shit online, people in the hyperpop scene in the US as well. Most importantly, I want to make music for young South Asian people, so it’s important for me to make music using Asian languages. And then also to make sure to put on South Asians at events. I’ve been doing that for like two years or so, where the line up is all British Asians, so that sort of thing!
ME: What does your audience look like now? Who do you wish your audience were?
HJ: So my audience are entirely White Bisexuals. There’s not a single person of colour who watches me.
ME: Can white bisexuals ever be moral… ?
HJ: Not in my lifetime… not in your lifetime…
But yeah, I’m joking, I’m joking! Many young South Asian queers have contacted me. Like, I’ve meant something to them, which is very sweet, And I think it is just a representation politics thing, because I don’t think I’m really doing anything. I’m just existing, right? I’m not really changing anyone’s lives other than just making music. But I’ve found it very sweet if they’ve stopped me in person in London or if they’ve ever sent me a message.
ME: Hit me with the inspirations for the new EP!
HJ: I tried to mix a lot of different genres that I’m inspired by, things like J-pop and drill. Also a lot of South Asian music! I rap in Tamil and Japanese in a lot of the tracks so in that way I represent South Asian heritage. So yeah, there’re quite a few influences on the new EP. Also lots of them come from people who I’m currently working with and people who I’m fans of as well, people in the current UK underground scene.
ME: Swisher is a super catchy song – it seems to be aimed at someone! Who’s the guy?
HJ: His name is Keegan, and he lives at 23 Richmond Road.
ME: Pull up?
HJ: Absolutely, he’s just a wasteman. It’s all in the song.
I feel like so many men will treat trans women very cruelly in public. I think it establishes their sense of masculinity, because they’re feeling like it’s challenged – being with a trans woman in the first place, being seen out in public, and then also just general misogyny, because men love to do that.
ME: Recently it’s become more common to make an overt distinction between ‘gay’ and ‘queer’ – at least in my perception anyway; it’s quite interesting. Have you ever played for a ‘gay’ venue? Have they ever invited you?
HJ: That’s such a fucking good question. Oh my God, no! All of the gigs I do are put on by trans people. They’re put on by trans men, trans mascs. They’re put on by trans women. They’re put on by some bisexual cisgender women of colour as well! But they’re not put on by white gay men. I’ve known white gay men in the industry that have not been not good to the people around them. I mean, there’s just a lot of stealing.
ME: As in not paying people?
HJ: Yeah, they’re taking the money. It’s like they’re coming over here, taking all our jobs… Yeah, good solid trans jobs!
ME: What is the trans economy?
HJ: The Trans economy is 90% baristas and then the remaining 10% are just different flavours of social media manager*.
*the social media editor for GAY45 and interviewer for this piece is, in fact, trans.*
ME: So real. Who are the artists that need to be plugged in order to remedy this? Who are the artists that need to leave their coffee job because they can’t hack it anymore? Day in, day out, being harassed by Boomers…
HJ: (pretending to be a boomer) Do you just do straight, like straight coffee… straight dick coffee? Why make it so complicated.. What is this dick with a curve latte?
But ok ok… Princess Xixi, Angela, all these girls have been amazing. They need more support, yeah? Tara Lily as well. Also, Tsu Nami! She’s an American Asian woman. She’s a barista, but she also has millions of streams on Spotify. So, there are loads of people who I’ve met. The thing I think I’ve learned the most by meeting people through the scene is that everyone is fucking poor, like, barely anyone is making it work. There are no transgender millionaires in the music scene, apart from maybe Kim Petras, and then you have to work with Dr Luke the rest of your life. So it’s kind of lose-lose.
ME: What do people confess to you? And what do you wish they really said?
HJ: They confess their deepest gender secrets and traumas which are not useful to me. I wish that people revealed unto me their bank details
ME: Within the artistic community that you have in London, the queer producers and queer artists that you collaborate with, do you also find that it’s a community beyond just making art?
HJ: Yeah, absolutely! I’ve met my friends through it. I’ve met people who I live with through it. I think it’s so important to put on real-life events and to also go to the real events, even if you’re not performing, and just talk to people and find out what people like listening to, find out what goes hard in the club – find out what you like musically. Because I think like, if you’re exploring your music taste, then you’re also exploring kind of what makes you you.
ME: For a lot of trans people across the UK, unless they find community in larger cities, they tend to access trans culture online. So, because of this, there’s quite an intense feedback loop: the online creates the real, the real creates the online. How do you think that changes trans culture?
That’s a fantastic question, yeah, so gonna start off very grim. Brianna Ghey’s mom – Brianna was the 15 year old trans girl who was murdered the other year – Brianna Ghey’s Mom, is lobbying the government to prevent under 16’s from accessing social media, essentially restricting minor’s social media presence. And it seems like this will go through, you know, there’s a lot of cross-party support.
But it’s a complicated issue. In my experience, and for a lot of the trans people I’ve met, trans mascs and trans femmes, the only community we found was online. This community was our only hope for existing. Like, I’m 28, I’m very old, so in the early 2000s it was peak, you know, and it was even worse before then. So it was absolutely necessary for queer people to connect online. But I’m also a boomer – so I think you need to meet up IRL with people regularly. So yeah, obviously there are dangers, but I really do think that it helps young trans people to find resources and talk to each other online; but that’s also something which is very difficult to argue for. I think even if the Online Safety Act passes like, trans people always exist in the shadows. We got VPNs. We got computers, we’ll figure it out.
ME: On multiple levels, it could be said that Charli XCX sonically cosplays as a trans woman. How do we feel about the mass popularisation of trans aesthetics?
HJ: That’s so funny. But yeah, I went to a donk night. It was entirely attended by straight men, and all of the vocals were hyper pop trans girls: formant shifted, pitch shifted vocals. It seemed like nobody in the room was aware of the material conditions which led to that vocal stylistic change, which is something also mirrored by cisgender artists. Which I’m fine with because I’m pro cisgender men going extinct by 2053, we’re gonna define them out of existence.
ME: As a final question, do you think that trans people produce better art because they’re producing art from the sidelines? Do you think that’s why people try to capitalise off of trans aesthetics?
HJ: Yeah – I think that the general appropriation of the outsider, of the subaltern, is just a typical theme within mainstream culture and we’ve seen this most obviously and most keenly in music, with the music of Black americans. So yeah, it’s a similar thing with transgender cultural production. I think we are obviously much smaller than other groups. But in that sense we also have an outsized influence on electronic music, on internet culture. You know, these things are definitely the most important areas of mainstream culture right now – without a doubt!
You can presave htmljones’s upcoming EP here. She also has a GoFundMe page for her gender-affirming facial feminisation surgery, which you can donate to here.
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