Whoever has heard and seen his artistry always remembers his look and his name. Serpentwithfeet is known for his strange and ever-changing artistic looks and aesthetics in his music videos and his every day – top that with a mixture of lyrics about queer love and sensuality in the modern day and a pure, golden voice, Josiah Wise’s performance in Berlin gave indieBerlin something completely new.
The concert took place on Tuesday 17th April at 8pm at the Prince Charles club on Prinzenstraße. It was quite an intimate gathering of friends, family, fans, LGBT+ community members inspired by his depiction of gay love and artists influenced by his aesthetic in general.
Serpentwithfeet at Prince Charles Berlin – photographer credit Mina Attalla
Serpentwithfeet grabbed and pushed air, felt the vibrations of his own voice and moved with such ease and fluidity on stage.
Starting the show was support act Klein, who’s primarily electronic work is more art than what we know of conventional music. It included random voices, noises, lack of a solid beat, her own voice rewinded, and vibration sounds that seemed to have been choreographed with the lights of the Prince Charles, strobing and waving up and down the room of the main stage to make the experience interesting for both eyes and ears.
Entering onto the stage afterward, serpentwithfeet wore the massive septum ring he’s known for but included an open vest with glitter all over his body, massive, baggy trousers that had glitter covered, sequined material flowing from it. He used this and his whole body as part of his art in his performance which was mesmerising.
Serpentwithfeet at Prince Charles Berlin – photographer credit Mina Attalla
Serpentwithfeet grabbed and pushed air, felt the vibrations of his own voice and moved with such ease and fluidity on stage. One of the highlights of his performance was some of the additions he made to his songs unavailable on his recorded tracks and unique to the adaptations of his life. He mentioned someone, a partner or lover, going to Egypt and sang it in a beautiful way you wouldn’t have known it wasn’t the original song.
He made jokes about the songs too. For example, in his song flickering, one of the speakers started glitching and so he sang his lyrics: ‘I’m starting to feel the cord connecting us two is made of gossamer’, but towards the speaker as if they were in a deep and complicated relationship which made the audience laugh. Josiah even improvised with some of his songs singing about his big pockets and brought out his toy lion to accompany him and support him through some of his piano-based songs which was so endearing and brought a nice touch.
Serpentwithfeet at Prince Charles Berlin -photographer credit Mina Attalla
Ending the show with his latest single, bless ur heart, announcing he was going to ‘end it like in church’ by spreading the blessings, it was a heartfelt and gorgeous performance that left everyone cheering for a long time after he departed the stage.
