f i f is the moniker of Fiona Gurney, a New York City–based multi-instrumentalist whose music fuses math rock, post-hardcore, and alternative into melody-driven songs that treat genre as a dynamic tool. In early 2020, fresh off an 83-show run with her former math-rock duo Shake the Baby Til the Love Comes Out, Gurney found herself with an album’s worth of material, and no one left to play it with.

What followed was a years-long solo process of recording, rebuilding, and reckoning with the deeper reasons behind her need to share this music. The result is a deeply personal LP, recorded across apartments and stitched together from phone memos, early demos, and moments caught mid-writing. Working with limited gear, borrowed instruments, and skills still taking shape, Gurney embraced a learning process embedded in the music itself.

Both genre and recording texture become storytelling tools: some songs crackle with raw, lo-fi intimacy, while others unfold with clearer, more polished soundscapes. The lower forty eight is an ode to pattern recognition as much as it is a crusade against it; mirroring the fragmented process of reconstructing identity, and the uneasy peace of accepting it.