Around three years ago, Debby Friday’s life was “a shambles.” She’d just left Montréal, newly sober, and temporarily living in her mom’s basement in Vancouver. But it was during these months, closed off from the world, that Friday started making music.
“I took a weekend and watched a bunch of YouTube videos about how to use [the recording software] Logic, and then I just went full throttle,” Friday says. “I had no idea what I was doing, but even back then, I had the feeling of something special taking place – a heavy and significant change in my life’s direction.”
That change brought 2018’s Bitchpunk, Friday’s debut EP of industrial hip-hop she recorded in her bedroom. Since then, Friday’s released a string of EPs and singles that exist within the worlds of rap, electronic, and noise music. Now she’s won the 2020 Prism Prize for music video, and has been featured in Pitchfork, The Fader, and more.
She recently released, “Runnin,” which she wrote last summer, during a time she describes as scary, but also full of clarity. “With my previous release, Death Drive, I was so serious and so hard on myself,” she says. “I wanted to have fun again.” Unlike her previous records, “Runnin” also marks the first time Friday has worked with outside producers, teaming up with Cayne and Andrew of Big Kill for her first studio recording.
A self-proclaimed “workaholic [who] is only comfortable when I’ve got a million things going on,” Friday currently has multiple audio-visual projects in motion, including her Master’s degree in Fine Arts thesis project LINK SICK, an audio play that will open to the public later this month. She’s also working on her debut full-length album, but doesn’t feel the need to rush it.
“I think the way the pandemic has re-organized our world, it has also re-organized my entire being, and therefore the way I approach my music-making,” says Friday. “I know what I’m doing now. I feel more confident. A little more reckless, a little more wild.”