Infinity Knives: “We’re not dishonest about who we are”

Fri, 17 Oct, 2025 - 09:00

‘WELL, it’s always weird to see people attach their, sort-of, moral values to yours — whether it be good or not — because once you release a product out, you become the product and not ‘you’ anymore. Does that make sense? I’m no longer a human being, because it’s just … I commodified that piece, y’know?”

Tariq Ravelomanana, the Baltimore, Maryland-based producer and musician also known by his nom-de-plume of Infinity Knives, cuts a pleasant, unassuming figure on the other side of a video call — discussing his new digs, pals from Cork, and a guitar that your writer has accidentally left in shot during the conversation — but when it gets down to brass tacks, is exactly as blunt and intentional as the music he’s involved with.

Currently one half of a duo with rapper and fellow Baltimore resident Brian Ennals, he’s limbering up for a European excursion, including an October 26 stop at UCC Library’s Creative Zone, in support of their most recent LP, A City Drowned in God’s Black Tears, which opens with The Iron Wall — a skittish, noisy tone-setter in direct confrontation of the prevailing world powers, the lyrics of which would probably give our legal department palpitations to reprint most of: “You can get blown up any time of day/but the bombs will stay ‘Made in USA’,” for one relatively tame example.

“From the people I really cared about, who really saw it firsthand, they saw how much of a toll it took on me,” he says, when asked about the response to the record’s release back in April.

“Then there’s a passive listener who’s like, ‘this is cool’, or ‘this is bad’. Or people really had something to say, which is like … it’s a confrontational album. So I expected pushback, right?

“The thing I did not expect, though, is the bad-faith arguments, at least in the beginning.

“There was still some sympathisers [of the Israeli forces’ aggression in Gaza], I don’t know, they were conned into thinking that this was like some holy war, whatever the f**k, y’know … so I got a lot of s**t from those people, so I don’t know. It’s just … it’s out there. I don’t know, I’m on to the next thing”.

The creation of A City Drowned… brought with it a number of creative and technical setbacks and challenges, unfortunately coinciding with no small amount of personal tumult and trauma on the parts of its main players and their circles — Everyone I Love is Depressed being no subtle nod to this background tension — which would ultimately serve to intensify the conditions in which the record was made.

“I mean, I had so much. [Brian] would just show up, lay down lines, and they were good.

“Sometimes we had plans to do certain songs in certain ways, and then he would just come in and steamroll everything. That Kobe Bryant line, I remember I hit record, it was supposed to be a different line, he said that, and I stopped it.

“I was like, ‘dude, what the f**k’, and he was like, ‘don’t do that to me again. I’m a grown man. Let’s run it back’. And then we did it.

“I wasn’t, like, this angel keeping s**t together. I was also dealing with my own bullshit, losing my computer, and having to literally, one by one, find stems (isolated instrument and vocal tracks) that I had to hard-copy from one computer to another… [By the end of that period of time], I literally lost my house.

“And it was supposed to be, like, more or less smooth sailing.”

It’s a difficult album, forged in difficult circumstances, that more or less finds Ravelomanana and Ennals stripping their practice and intent back down to the very, very basics, as a response to the wider state of the world.

Far from an incoherent howl at alienation in late-capitalist America, however, it developed in the manner that it did as a coping mechanism for all parties involved. What began as an intended change of pace for the duo ended up becoming, to say the least, a statement of purpose.

“First of all, we wanted to make a pop record. We wanted to make a fun record. But it would have been so disingenuous, and I didn’t want to be. If anything, you can say, whatever the f**k we are artistically, whether you like it or not, we’re not dishonest about who we are.

“We’re very blunt, even in how we speak. We don’t like to rap s**t and metaphors, and try to be clever and all that s**t, because that’s f***ing whack, and it’s counter-intuitive.

“I don’t want my music to be for the academics or what have you. Y’know, that’s how we got Donald Trump to begin with, because I feel like the left and its [long-time] parties completely abandoned the working people, and Donald Trump is a result. He might be the face of it all, but he is America. Don’t get me wrong, like, f**k the dude, but he is literally the same old America that we’ve all known … it’s always been like this.”

Responding to the present moment, amid ongoing intensification of social, economic, and structural inequities, is, for any artist, no mean feat. Indeed, the very nature of mounting an artistic response amid the continuing untethering of a commonly held and understood reality is in question, given that the strategy of mainstream politics has, in too many countries, increasingly become simply about moving fast and breaking things, to use a tired old term.

“This is not an educated hypothesis. This is my own thing. This is my personal belief. Because I’m not an academic.

“I dropped out of high school, but I’m gonna say, the only way through it, is through it.

“It’s definitely not going to be holding hands or shaking hands. Rather I should say, some dumb s**t is gonna have to happen, unfortunately.

“The worst part about it is that the underprivileged folk and the working people are gonna feel it the most, but in the long run, and this is speaking from America only … I think it would be beneficial for the world, for America to step down and stop being the police of the world … and that’s sort of happening.”