BODY/PRISON

By Shekah

Evita Manji delivers a searing lead single from their debut album “Spandrel?,” signaling a radical departure from the lush, otherworldly sounds of their earlier work. Where 2021’s Neptune EP shimmered with aquatic synths and day-glo melodies, “Body/Prison” is stark, clanging, and brimming with emotional weight. It’s a track forged in grief and existential unease, reflecting both personal loss and collective trauma. Against the backdrop of SOPHIE’s sudden death, Manji’s partner and creative touchstone, and the suffocating wildfires that blanketed their home city of Athens, the song reads like a sonic exorcism, pushing into the darkest corners of both sound and self.

From the opening seconds, “Body/Prison” wastes no time in immersing the listener in its brutalist architecture. Industrial bass slams into the mix like collapsing metal beams, ricocheting with raw, mechanical energy. The percussion is volatile and restless, conjuring a sense of urgency and claustrophobia. As if caught in a system on the verge of failure, the track sputters and stutters, momentarily gathering force before draining out like air from a punctured lung. Manji’s voice pitched and looped into ghostly wisps, haunting the periphery before eventually being overtaken by a rising trance progression that feels as ominous as it is euphoric. It’s not just a song, it’s a collapse, a transformation, a rebirth through combustion.

The track is just as gripping. “A hologram of lies is trying to own me/And I can’t escape,” Manji cries out, capturing a sensation of being consumed by forces both external and internal. There’s a desperate yearning here for truth, for liberation, for clarity in a world that feels increasingly unreal. The metaphor of the body as a prison is especially potent given the album’s title and concept. A “spandrel” is an evolutionary byproduct, something that exists without a clear purpose. In times of crisis, Manji seems to ask: What parts of ourselves are necessary for survival, and what are simply remnants of past selves or systems? What can we shed when the world demands transformation?

“Body/Prison” is not easily categorized. It leans into industrial and trance aesthetics, but with a level of emotional intensity and personal specificity that sets it apart. The production is sharp-edged and visceral, yet never gratuitously harsh. Every sound feels intentional, every rupture in the beat, every distortion of the voice mirroring the psychic fragmentation that underpins the track. Even at its most chaotic, the song retains a core of vulnerability that keeps it grounded in human experience. The violence of the track doesn’t overwhelm; it reveals. By the final moments, as everything else fades, only Manji’s voice remains isolated, aching, defiant.

“Body/Prison” is not an easy listen, nor is it meant to be. It’s a statement of artistic reinvention, a fearless confrontation with grief, identity, and the limits of the self. With this single, Evita Manji has not only set the tone for Spandrel. Still, she has positioned herself as a singular voice in experimental electronic music, unafraid to delve into discomfort, to wrest meaning from pain, and to challenge both form and feeling. If this track is any indication, Spandrel? Promises to be a project of immense emotional and conceptual depth, one that doesn’t just ask hard questions but dares to embody them.