The Guimarães-based band’s new single arrives without asking permission and with no intention of softening the blow. It’s brutal, necessary, and disarming.
“It’s direct, it’s raw, it is what it is. If it bothers, then it’s working.” Unsafe Space Garden
Unsafe Space Garden returns with “FKNKU” (literally: knife in the ass), and the title leaves no room for doubt. This is a song that doesn’t seek to please; it seeks to pierce. Recorded and produced with the band’s recognisable rigour, the song confronts learned pain, disguised wounds, and the invisible cuts that each of us carries.
Nuno Duarte, Alexandra Saldanha, Filipe Louro, José Vale, Diogo Costa, and João Cardita construct, in this new track, a soundscape where chaos and precision merge, whose variations in intensity have already become a hallmark: the aggressive fuzz of the guitars intertwines with denser, more atmospheric passages, the drums accelerate and then pull the rug out from under us, the synthesizers take center stage. Without asking permission from any style guide, at the centre, the lyrics are the naked truth, accentuated by the things you feel but rarely speak. And just enough humour to make it all even more cutting.
After “WHERE’S THE GROUND?” (2023), which established Unsafe Space Garden as one of the most challenging proposals in contemporary Portuguese music, this new track stands as a necessary provocation in a time of convenient silences that don’t even know they are.
More than a visual complement, the music video for “FKNKU” is an organic extension of the song itself. Directed by André Tentugal and starring Frederico Ferreira, the video is the result of a deeply collaborative process between the band and the director. This is a creation where music and image intertwine in a single poetic gesture that results in an intense and symbolic journey, one that begins with the body transformed into a battlefield, both personal and collective.
After performing on stages such as NOS Primavera Sound, Tremor, Vodafone Paredes de Coura, MEO Kalorama, Festival FOCUS Wales, and Festival Sinsal, Unsafe Space Garden proves that there’s no need to smooth things over to conquer territory. Originality isn’t an obstacle; it’s fuel. They don’t make music about the world. They make music against inertia. Against precariousness, environmental collapse, the same old wars, and the future that continues to elude us.
“FKNKU” is now available on digital platforms!
“FKNKU” is the first glimpse of what promises to be a new chapter in the band’s discography, a chapter where there are no safe spaces. Neither for the one who does it, nor for the one who hears it.
Because if the stab is personal, the cut is political.
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