Who are THE LOWEST of LOW?
The Lowest of Low
The Lowest of Low is an orthophonic Hi-Fidelity sound experience. In the tightly boxed-up and neatly categorized little world in which most humans are content to live (if we must call it living...), it defies the Rules of Almighty Genre. Go on... classify it, indubitably and categorically. We'll wait. And uh... let us know, too, what you come up with because it would make marketing a hell of a lot easier.
Never one to take the easy path, MC Jizzy, from whom this wellspring of FutureRetro Unusuality continuously springs, will continue her personal quest to push back the boundaries of this FutureRetro music, for your listening pleasure.
MC Jizzy welcomes you into the world of the Low, and seeks to bash through your preconceived mental conceptions about music like a sledgehammer through the wall between your kitchen and dining room. So, you know, make some space and put down a drop cloth. A cup of coffee would be nice, too, cheers.
Bio
MC Jizzy (the W.O.B.)
The entity known as MC Jizzy is an incarnation of the Buddha who currently identifies as a volcano of a human female aged about 967 Earth-years. From her cave in the hills at the southernmost tip of Sicily, on the African continental plate, she channels music through an entity known to her only as “Fukijawa”, whom she first met in a previous incarnation during the early Han Dynasty somewhere in what is now Hunan Province. She was suspicious of him at first, as he seemed, at the time, to be disembodied, and to come from the Islands later known as Japan.
Legends suggest that her present incarnation was the result of a happy union between a human woman of the Crow tribe and an unknown stranger said to have borne many gifts, a skilful warrior with a long, powerful and sleek horse who could gallop for hours without tiring.
Star sign: Gemini
Likes: Well, MUSIC, duh! also... Swimming, Cooking, Casual weekend Goetic evocations, Watching anime, Painting, Pottery-making, the way warm sunshine strikes ruined sandstone buildings at about 2-4 pm, thinking about the tensile properties of various types of wood, the idea of cold fusion, shiny things, making stuff, making animations, animals in general, and goats in particular.
Dislikes: Lying assholes, and the people who believe them, fanatics and fantasists. And monkeys. Monkeys are fucking assholes. Also, driving a motor vehicle of any kind, stepping on surprisingly wet bathmats, and wearing day-clothes. Also event-driven (as opposed to character-driven) storytelling and cold weather.
Favourite colours: Etna Lava Red, Shiny dung Beetle Black, Vibrant Turquoise, and other colours that strike her unexpectedly.
Favourite scents: Rose geranium, Patchouli, Galbanum, the burnt blood of self-slain enemies, Storax, Green Tea, Jasmine, Musk.
Favourite foods: Coffee! Masala Dosa, Dirty, dirty, dirty rice, gyoza, onigirazu, crackers, Marmite.
Favourite God forms: Nuit, Hermes, Pan, Horus, Tahuti, Ma'at.
Blood Type: O … oh … OHHH …. OHHHH YESSS. YESSS!
In all seriousness….
The Lowest of Low — the music, the films, the videos, the artwork, the clothing designs, and even this website (these very words you’re reading right now, as well as all the other stuff, including sales fulfilment) is one woman. It’s me. And I really do live in Sicily, in a house. Sicilians have large families and hire their own family members, and do not hire foreigners if they can help it. Since I can't really work locally (and Brexit rules have made this even more challenging) I do all this stuff instead. I live in absolute poverty with no help from anyone, and I do this.
These activities are my sole source of income, and anything you do to support me in this crazy weirdness literally helps more than you can ever imagine. And here’s why I’m mentioning that:
Customers have complained that I should be charging more for all the shop stuff, and that I’m (literally) selling myself short. The quality of the clothing and bags and stuff is far above what they expected to receive (It’s true, I’ve bought a few of my own things before setting up this website, to check the quality so that I could sell them to other people in good conscience), and many people have warned me that my “stupidly affordable” prices probably drive some people away because they assume the stuff must be a bunch of junk. It isn’t, but they don’t know that because they’re trained to expect to have to pay through the nose for good quality stuff.
In actual fact, before I moved to Sicily, I lived on an isolated hill farm in the middle of a forest in the North York Moors National Park, in England. I kept some very wonderful goats, sweet little chickens, nice, well-mannered geese (yes! They do exist!) and some nutty ducks. I made my own cheese and yogurt, grew my own apples and potatoes, ate wild food like nettles and forest mushrooms, and lived on very little. Many winters, we were snowed in for about 3-4 months, so I used to make a large food order (with Suma, the whole foods cooperative) for the animals and for us to get us through. I made my own hay by hand with a scythe, and because I’m not all that keen on motor vehicles, I did all the planting by hand. No tractors, no car.
So, in the past 20 years, I have not lived on more than £5,000 per year, even now that I live in Sicily. So I will admit that my idea of pricing and modern everyday expenses are a little… different. In fact, my whole view of the world is a little different, and that’s why my music and everything else is so different, too. It’s what my experience of life has to offer.
Because I live on “next to nothing”, I believe that, for my efforts, a 5 - 15% profit on my costs from the workshop will (eventually) be enough to keep me going. It’s very early days still (I started all of this in 2018), and with the help of a growing number of enthusiastic fans and customers, I think the “vision” I have will actually work. I don't sell on Amazon because it's prohibitively expensive for little folks like me, and because paying Jeff Bezos even more of everyone's money is pretty much diametrically opposed to the whole idea I have here.
A lot of people think it’s kind of crazy, but the idea is this: lots of other “boutique” kind of places with their own distinctive designs are selling fancy goods at higher prices all over the web, and putting their stuff in front of everyone's eyes by playing the game, selling on Amazon and maybe whatever other huge multinational outlets still remain. The stuff I’m selling here is astonishingly well made. I’m told I could double my prices and no one would bat an eyelash, and in fact it might even attract more people to take a chance and buy something, because it’s more in line with what they expect.
But my perspective is this: when I shop online, I can’t afford the things I like best (not talking ugly Gucci sneakers, just normal, fairly nice stuff). Until I started designing in partnership with the workshop, I always settled for stuff that was affordable and not particularly nice. I tried never to pay more than €5 or 10 for anything. As global inflation changes, this has gone up slightly in recent years, but it’s still kind of where I’m at. I still can’t afford a lot of the items in my own shop. I rely on reports and (more importantly) photos from others in helping me to make sure the items I’m selling are “up to scratch”.
So incidentally, if you do buy something, please do write to me and send me photos, and give me honest feedback about the quality, the sizing, print quality, zippers and stitching or anything else that strikes you — for good or ill — about the item you’ve got. It helps me to make sure everything in the shop is something I can stand behind, and to know that I’m delivering good value for people’s hard-earned money.
(I don’t use Redbubble to fulfil the designs in here, incidentally, because many people say their t-shirts, etc., are thin and the print fades rapidly. I have an account with them, but none of this stuff is that stuff. I don’t mean to cast any shade on Redbubble, I don’t have any direct experience of their stuff myself, but I’ve heard it enough to kind of avoid taking the chance with them).
And this is the point: as someone who has to think very hard about how I spend my money, I want to create an outlet where people — whether they have a lot to spend or only a little — can afford something of high quality that’s going to last them a long time. I want people to see something I’ve designed and get pleasantly surprised (for a change) that they can afford it. I want them to take that chance, get pleasantly surprised, and wind up with something I’ve designed that brings them joy in their lives for a long time to come.
Bags that don’t fall apart after 3 months of daily use…. t-shirts that will withstand farm work and frequent washing for more than 6 months… warm hoodies that are actually f***ing warm… Beautiful, zany (and well-made) things to brighten normal lives.
So… that’s me, that’s my idea. I will be very grateful if you choose to help me to achieve it.
If you also wind up enjoying my music, and/or the animated series I've been working on (VOID) which is kind of the WHOLE REASON for everything, that would also be amazing.