GRIMACE IS EXACTLY WHO SHE WANTED TO BE

Design by Evan Tom

BY Evan Tom

Inside the cathartic, glitched-out world of Julia Harris, the 23-year-old artist
constructing the macabre sound she’s always envisioned

There’s a point toward the end of Julia Harris’ earliest song, “Medic,” where it starts to fracture. What begins as a soft, vulnerable ballad gradually builds into distorted warbles of electric guitar. The song’s progression closely mirrors the trajectory of the 23-year-old Philadelphia-based artist and the unique world she’s building for “brooding, unsavory, maladaptive, daydreaming type of girls” as Grimace.

Harris’ early memories of music include a cracked Samsung phone filled with downloaded Lana Del Rey leaks and later, her mom’s computer, which she hijacked with GarageBand out of a need to create and release pent-up frustrations. From there, Harris began to envision herself as an artist: “I remember being thirteen years old when I had this really egotistical idea of what I would turn out to be,” she says.

Today, that thirteen-year-old’s vision is becoming fully realized. Growing up with time spent in Alabama and Virginia, Harris now studies art and design at the Community College of Philadelphia, a path she returned to after dropping out of high school. Extending her creative world beyond visual art, Harris is building a story around Grimace, an honest, hyper-focused world made of vocal chops, breakbeats, and glitchy synths.

Despite sharing a name, Grimace is not to be confused with McDonald’s iconic purple character, though the coincidence of sharing a Gemini sun sign with the creature isn’t lost on her. The origins of this name lie within a drawing in her sketchbook, which became the embodiment of her art. “My art presents itself in a very macabre way, but in reality, I’m a very friendly person—Grimace is representative of my duality in that way.”

Her surrender to contradiction defines her unique worldview, one that finds profound comfort in the seemingly unlovely. Feeling most at home in places others might dismiss as grim or unremarkable, Harris finds unbounded inspiration among textured grit. Although appearing cynical to others, she views it as strongly attuned to the beauty in the overlooked, the kind of beauty that inspires her musings, even in a dirty gas station bathroom.

An “unsavory” worldview has always defined her sensibility, but it was in her recent move to Philadelphia and increased engagement in visual arts that catalyzed its fullest integration into her music. Where she once operated purely on instinct, she’s begun approaching her music with the intentionality of a mixed-media artist. Her studies have provided her with the framework to construct a cohesive vision where sound, image, and texture interact to build a complete, methodical world.

The relocation also forged a new creative independence. Once working closely with a collaborator on her early work, Harris found herself starting from scratch in her new environment. The 2023 track “Cake” marked a turning point—the first fully self-produced song that she feels truly represents her. “Everything from ‘Cake’ to now has been like a rediscovery,” she asserts. “I’ve always known I wanted to make something a little more moody, a little more pensive, or frustrated or dark.”

She’s continually shedding the need to be referential, focusing instead on building a dense, moody sound she always wanted to hear. Her wide array of influences is a testament to this ethos. She pulls from the intentional production of Sneaker Pimps, noting that while “the overall tone of our music is very different, there are moments in their production and attitudes they take up that really inspire me.” This inspiration meshes with the glitchiness of Frost Children and the thematic weight of ’90s bands like Failure, informing a sound that is unmistakably Grimace. “Grunge music has impacted my worldview a lot,” she says. “My music is very different in sound, of course, but I think the themes and the aesthetics are sort of in that same world.”

Ironically, Harris’ intensely personal sound is one fueled by a deep belief in community, where her digital and physical spaces are fertile ground for collaboration. Take her relationship with Philly shoegaze band Her New Knife, which began digitally before a physical meet-up in Washington, D.C., at a live show. ” Proposing a collaboration on Her New Knife’s Chrome Is A Lullaby remix album felt natural to Harris, following a moment in San Francisco where she “became so overwhelmed by the music that [she] started sobbing,” listening to the original version of “vitamin beauty.” Finding herself included on a split release with artists she deeply admired validated her belief that personal work is rooted in collective exchange.

Beyond the physical space of Philly’s alternative scene, Harris has crafted a distinct presence on TikTok, treating the platform less as a marketing scheme and more as an extension of her psyche. Her account operates as a digital diary and testing ground where ideas are workshopped. An early demo of “hyperlattice” posted back in June was met with positive reception. Harris continued working on the track, eventually becoming the guiding force of a larger project.

The raw, thematic tissue of her music—anxiety, insecurity, and sex—is drawn directly from her life. It’s clear in her vision and distinct sound that music is both an outlet and the pillar of her identity, a force so interlaced with her sense of self that it has become a functional necessity.

The synthesis of these two construction methods is evident in “hyperlattice,” in which Harris distills the idea of executive dysfunction into a compelling sound made of textured layers, choppy beats, and unique syntax. Grimace sings, “I leave my shoes untied / My socks won’t stay up anymore / And I can’t brush my hair / My lungs are weak in the morning / Do you know what that feels like?” illustrating the cascading breakdown of basic self-care.

Following the evolution from her earliest works to now, you witness an artist shedding skin. “[hyperlattice] is like a microcosm of the genesis of my music,” Harris says. “The song itself starts very calm, and then it sort of descends into this electronic, distorted, blown-out feeling. I think it’s kind of the same character arc for my music over the last couple of years.”

The track was born from a night where Harris found herself in a room surrounded by successful peers, a moment of incongruency that triggered a spiral of comparison. “Sometimes you can be having the time of your life, yet still be so in your head,” she says. By channeling those overwhelming emotions into a song with whirring, glitching beats, Harris constructed comfort for others, receiving messages from listeners who found solace in the track’s vulnerability. “It wound up being that a lot of the people who I was in that room with really loved the song,” she says. “I kind of thought, ‘Okay, I’m capable.’ I’m super proud of the song, and it’s probably the best reception I’ve ever had.” The culmination of these experiences is now being woven into her upcoming project, push zero.

Where her EP, Between the Eyes, served as a candid exploration of “sex and figuring out not just sex, but gender and sexuality,” push zero is a darker, more complex beast. It’s a project about self-doubt and mental distortion, about “not seeing things as they are.” Naturally, push zero is also about Philly, the place that has bled into the fabric of her music, a city she describes as “a little gross and a little perfect.”

Her upcoming project is a concentrated body of ten tracks designed to “live together in the same world.” Between the Eyes was her proof of concept, the moment she knew she was “capable of making something a little bigger.” Now, push zero is the full realization of that ambition, a project literally built around Philly’s soundscape.

It’s littered with the sounds of street crossing signals and trains. There are intercoms. There are beeps and honks. There’s glass breaking,” Harris explains. This focus on field recordings and texture led to a specific fixation: the buzz of a street light she recorded on a walk. “I became so obsessed with that clip of audio that I was like, ‘I have to like base something off of this in its entirety.’”

push zero is the ultimate expression of her worldview. A profound sonic world orchestrated by everyday grit. Grimace has stopped searching for a place to belong, existing in the landscape and carving her own place—proving, just as she declares, “I’m exactly who I wanted to be at thirteen.”