Pierce With Arrow

Pierce with Arrow is the new collaborative project of U.S. electronic music producer Troy Pierce and Colombian audiovisual artist Natalia Escobar, aka Poison Arrow. Borne of a shared love for deeply melancholic musical moments more suited to a candle lit living room than a dance floor, they eventually went into the studio with a larger project in mind.

The duo's shared interest in a spatial and cinematic approach to music informed their first project, Shatter, a multi-faceted endeavor inspired by the Greek myth of Echo and Narcissus. They first created a collection of shadowy surrealist videos as content for their live performances, and then wrote music inspired by these vignettes. Later, a scent was created in collaboration with the perfumer Mark Buxton as an olfactive translation of the music and videos. These three elements come together to form a unique cross-sensory experience.

Musically Shatter is a diverse offering, full of slowly revealing, dreamy soundscapes and sluggish off kilter beats that lead the listener through mysterious terrain. Individually, each artist has a range of experiences that dutifully lend themselves to this more expansive work.

Escobar’s interdisciplinary output invokes moods of haunting melancholy, inspired by the dark side of love and desire. Her musical alter ego Poison Arrow uses hypnotic rhythms paired with provocative vocals in an interpretation of traditional Colombian cultural tropes. Her first EP under this moniker If You Don’t Love me (I’ll Cut Your Face) was released on dBridge’s Pleasure District Label. Natalia also remixed Mathew Jonson’s seminal track Decompression, released on his Freedom Engine Label.

Troy Pierce is best known for his minimal techno productions in the early 2000’s, which include three studio albums, ten e.p.’s, and more than twenty remixes for artists including Depeche Mode, Juan Atkins, and The Knife. He was a co-founder of the label Items & Things, along with fellow artists Magda and Marc Houle, and is one half of the experimental techno duo Louderbach, alongside Gibby Miller.

With their debut album on Dais records, an ongoing olfactory collaboration with Folie A Plusieurs, and a live show in the works, Pierce with Arrow represents the duo's attempt to expand the very nature of how music is consumed to create something as immersive as a harrowing dream or an illicit love affair.