photo: Sina Lesnik
Bio
Felicia Chen has long resisted simple categorization. She cut her teeth operating in New York City's scrappy DIY and experimental club scenes, channeling a passion for pop music, metal, rap, and global dance forms into unpredictable multi-layered DJ sets that harmonized with the US East Coast's relentless noise. It was in NYC where Chen connected with beloved local underground imprint PTP, a collective of like-minded outsiders that still exerts its influence on her today. PTP handled the release of her debut album 'PURGE' in 2019 and it substantiated her artistic voice, refining her vast pool of influences into a cathartic distillate that oozes between vulnerable beauty and retching chaos.
"This ain’t just your run-of-the-mill wall of power electronics and angry screams ... Dis Fig’s range is surprisingly undogmatic, including synthetic brass sections, flutes, and piles of quiet" - The Quietus
"Harrowing as they can be, PURGE’s compositional twists and turns are harsh enough to offer you the same thing that they offered Dis Fig herself — relief from the bad shit you’re holding inside" - VICE
As a DJ, Chen has nurtured a reputation for her curiosity and restless energy, but as a live performer she edges away from the club completely, using her acrobatic voice and entire body to transmit emotional complexity that's deeper than language.
In 2020, Chen teamed up with veteran British producer Kevin Martin, aka The Bug, to imagine what Resident Advisor described as "ambient dancehall and sensual trip-hop" on their debut collaborative full-length 'In Blue'. This time, she assumed the role of front-woman, augmenting Martin's fractured, dubwise productions with intimate cabaret echoes and blood-curdling screams.
“Dis Fig is the latest collaborator who brings out the best in (The Bug), revealing a new facet of her own artistry and unlocking a new dimension to The Bug's sound. Dis Fig transcends In Blue's origins in genre exercise into an otherworldly fever dream, an album of tectonic bass and thundering drums that somehow feels intimate and sensual. It's as much her triumph as it is his.” - Resident Advisor
Concurrently, Chen has been working alongside radical Chinese multi-disciplinary artist Tianzhuo Chen; she scored his ambitious performance 'An Atypical Brain Damage' in 2017 and began performing in his adventurous TRANCE 12-hour, 3-day durational performances shortly afterwards. She plays a crucial role in this series of operatic live exhibitions where Tianzhuo and his cohorts terraform various locations to create psychedelic durational experiences that are tactile, visceral and unmoored to one musical form or another; they create a space where interpretive dance, carnival and ritual elements can mutate into something completely fresh and utterly unique.
And in 2024, Chen connected with acclaimed post-metal operators The Body, working from the ground up and collaborating on every level, using her signature atmospheric production and her voice to offset the duo's grinding drones. On 'Orchards of a Futile Heaven', released on Chicago's iconic Thrill Jockey imprint, The Body and Dis Fig puzzle out a cathartic revision of "heavy music", muddling ethereal chorals with blurred and blown-out sampled textures and intense rhythms. This project landed them both on the cover on The Wire Magazine.
main page photo: AF
Cortes