Introducing: DOGTOOTH

LINTD (Life Is Never That Deep) isn’t just a solo project — it’s a radical, multidisciplinary portal into black speculative futures. The brainchild of Nigerian-born artist Iyunoluwanimi Yemi-Shodimu, LINTD fuses music, film, installation, and research to imagine worlds where the marginalized are not just visible, but free.

Over the past four years — under monikers like GOMID, SMOOCH SOUNDSYSTEM, and FEED — Yemi-Shodimu has become a fixture in the UK’s experimental underground, collaborating with visionaries like Space Afrika, Iceboy Violet, and Balraj Samrai. Whether onstage at The White Hotel or installing work for Factory International and Asaabako Festival, LINTD’s practice pulses with invention, resistance, and soul.

We caught up with LINTD to talk radical imagination, sonic storytelling, and what it means to build black experimental futures — one spectacular world at a time.

1. DOGTOOTH has been described as a reclamation of the Black African macabre as a utopian space—can you talk about what drew you to that concept and how it shaped the album’s emotional and sonic terrain?

I think truly, I have been there all my life. It has always felt a macabre level of surreal, the insane mode of dissociative being that we have to occupy as people of colour, and then as human beings. Me telling stories in that manner for me just feels like validation. There is very little exaggeration, this album is exactly what it feels like to be alive as myself right now. It's a grimm fairytale, so there is love and wonder, but also some people eat dogs and children. 

2. The titular creature in DOGTOOTH is surreal, contradictory, and haunting—how did this character come to life for you, and what role does it play in navigating themes like paranoia, pleasure, and survival?

He's A creature who eats dogteeth for lunch. Something about that image haunted me, there is little or no nutritional value to dogs, and he doesn’t even eat the meat, yet he persists out of pure pleasure.

3. You blend genres and techniques from ambient, hip hop, classical, and electronic dub in a way that feels deeply visceral—how do you approach composition when working across such disparate sonic languages?

I make a lot of noise, whatever feels good stays and it is then my duty to make sense of it, which I dedicate myself to.

4. There’s a powerful quote in the press release where you say, “this is the world as I experience it... teeming with violence and threat, but full of possibility.” How do you balance documenting that reality with offering moments of hope or transcendence?

I don't balance, I just find the truth. Sometimes the truth is hopeful, in a kind of pragmatic immediate way. Most of the time it is much more complex than that, which I allow my music to speak to. Ultimately it's just gotta slap and Pete and I make sure of that.

5. DOGTOOTH is Act II of The Black Impossible, following SMOOCH SOUNDSYSTEM. How does this record extend or deepen the project’s vision, and what should we expect from Act III?

This is paranoia. Act 3 is grief. It is the extreme of what it is to be black in this world. Impossible, splendid, dangerous. I am here for all of it. I love all black people across the stars dearly and with the much needed ferocit. These albums are a small insight into that love.