When London Grammar first arrived onto a heavily saturated music scene almost a decade ago, their emotive brand of pop balladry drew comparisons to indie favorites like the xx and Florence and the Machine as much as it caught the attention of mainstream audiences. Marked by Hannah Reid’s dynamic vocal range, the British trio stood out from their contemporaries – and eventually their imitators – thanks not only to the accelerated nature of hype (they were frontrunners for the coveted Mercury Prize before their 2013 debut, If You Wait, had even come out), but because their music displayed a unique earnestness and restraint. With their sophomore album, 2017’s Truth Is a Beautiful Thing, they retained their focus on making tastefully elegant pop music, though this time the increased grandiosity of the production left it feeling occasionally hollow and lifeless. Their third full-length effort, Californian Soil, sees them slightly tweaking their sound to hint at the scope of their musical ambitions, but the results are once again mixed.
London Grammar reveal their willingness to explore new territory as early as on the album’s title track, which follows the string-led ‘Intro’; there’s a heft to the instrumental here that much of the album sorely lacks, even if the obvious nod to Massive Attack’s ‘Teardrop’ isn’t backed by the right amount of dramatic tension. But as a whole, Californian Soil suffers from the opposite problem: It’s clear that Reid’s powerful voice has lost none of its resonance, but it can’t always make up for the gaps left by weak songwriting and bland production. ‘Missing’ features one of her most layered performances, though what exactly she’s singing about remains ambiguous. That emotional vagueness defines much of the record: Reid opens ‘How Does It Feel’ with the line “Pure emotion/ Let it burn,” but as the track develops into a flavorless attempt at disco revivalism, you’re left wondering, how does it feel? With a title that harkens back to the group’s breakthrough Disclosure collaboration ‘Help Me Lose My Mind’, ‘Lose Your Head’ has a similarly catchy hook but falls short of making their tepid formula feel fresh.
There are instances where Reid’s ability to tap into a particular emotional state elevates the often nondescript nature of the lyrics. ‘Lord It’s a Feeling’ stands out as an evocative ballad dealing with infidelity, displaying a boldness that’s rare coming from a distinctly middle-class pop group like London Grammar: “I saw the way you laughed behind her back/ When you fucked somebody else,” Reid sings at the end of the first verse, lighting a match before delivering the song’s scorching chorus. While the writing would still benefit from a bit more depth and nuance, the song aims to elicit a deep-rooted sense of empathy rather than painting a detailed picture, and the forceful percussion helps build the atmosphere around it.
Elsewhere, Californian Soil serves as further proof of the trio’s knack for making n otherwise run-of-the-mill piece of mid-tempo electronica feel like their own. Though Reid has expressed uncertainty about ‘Call Your Friends’ (“I’m not sure if we ever got that song quite right,” she says), its stirring vulnerability and memorable melodies render it a clear highlight in the tracklist. Meanwhile, songs like the George FitzGerald-produced ‘Baby It’s You’ demonstrate that the band is more than capable of integrating a more upbeat sound into their usual stylings, trading melancholy for an exuberance that feels wholly genuine amidst a flurry of shimmering synths.
The album’s sonic uniformity can have the effect of holding back some of its more interesting explorations of femininity and the music industry at large, but the group’s efforts to present a stronger thematic throughline aren’t entirely lost. The closing track, ‘America’, goes to a place their music hardly ever has before, tying their own musical journey to the false ideals of a nation they’re not even from: “All of our time chasing a dream/ A dream that meant nothing to me,” Reid sings. There’s an honesty there that contradicts any suspicion that London Grammar are only interested in playing it safe at this point in their career; the deeper they go with each attempt at fleshing out their sound, the louder their music will resonate.
Beach House have contributed original music for Omega Mart, an immersive psychedelic grocery store installation in Las Vegan created by art and entertainment company Meow Wolf. After the exhibit opened in February, Beach House and Meow Wolf have today (April 22) officially released ‘Marin’s Dreams’, a coming-of-age short story that takes place within Meow Wolf’s narrative world, featuring an original soundtrack and sound design by Beach House. Watch the film, directed by West and written by Kimberly Belflower, below.
The film’s official synopsis reads: “Marin Dram, granddaughter of recently missing Omega Mart CEO Walter Dram, has disappeared. But her dreams were left behind, revealing portals, aliens, and bisexual angst caught in a mirror beside her bed. Like many teenage girls, Marin has a difficult relationship with her overbearing mother Cecelia Dram, newly minted Dramcorp CEO. But unlike her mother, Marin has supernatural abilities – and they’re calling her. She just wanted to be normal, but normal was not an option.”
Beach House’s most recent LP was 2019’s 7. In an interview with Rolling Stone, Alex Scally and bandmate Victoria Legrand revealed they have been working on new music since completing their tour in 2019. “We’d like to get there,” Scally said of the possibility of a new album. “But you never want to say you’re there if you’re not there. Our goal is to make more music.”
1954’s Gogis an interesting artefact of ’50s Americana. To watch it now is to look at a vision of the future from the past, answering science fiction’s most pertinent question: what if?
Gog is about an underground electronic brain called NOVAC (Nuclear Operative Variable Automatic Computer). Buried in the desert, NOVAC’s host facility is developing new technologies. Most significantly, a space station is under construction powered by solar energy collected from massive mirrors. When mysterious murders plague the base, Doctor Van Ness (Herbert Marshall) calls upon David Sheppard (Richard Egan) to investigate. Is it possible that NOVAC itself is committing the murders? Or is someone else to blame?
Released in 3D and colour in 1954, Gog is a flawed but fascinating look at technological possibility. Part of its appeal now is in seeing a depiction of the futuristic that’s so evidently rooted in the past: robots instructed by paper slips; an underground electronic base with a paper filing system; a scientist stood in a technological supercomputer insisting that the human body will never go into space.
There are a number of interesting ideas at play, too. NOVAC, and the facility which houses it, are both tools of warfare. Every part of the proceedings is entangled in Cold War fears. The space station under construction is a marvel, but the urgency that underpins its development is in the name of getting it before they do. Because of the immense power of its solar mirrors (effectively producing giant lasers), we (read: America) must be the first to have it lest it fall into the wrong hands (read: the Soviets). There’s an implication that we can possess terrifying weaponry but they can’t because they would obviously use it – quite unlike us. The wonder of these scientific achievements is therefore tempered by their hidden and suspicious nature, shrouded by the desert away from prying eyes.
And so, when NOVAC runs amok, we see a possible remark that over-reliance on defensive technology can also be one’s undoing.
A lobby card for Gog’s 1954 release.
That said, the film’s ending undercuts those same ideas about the follies of Cold War defence. Without spoiling too much, certain theories about the cause of NOVAC’s problems are less introspective than one might appreciate – effectively vindicating any and all concerns about us versus them. Interestingly, the mirror-powered lasers of Gog bear a resemblance to the Strategic Defence Initiative developed under Ronald Reagan’s administration. That Reagan’s presidency effectively ushered in a nostalgia for ’50s conservatism chimes all the more with some of Gog‘s clunkier messaging.
Ultimately, this is a film carried by its themes and ideas over action – of which there is very little. In fact, one questions why this film was released in 3D as none of the proceedings really lend themselves to the format. This is unlike its 3D contemporaries (like It Came from Outer Spaceor Creature from the Black Lagoon) which play to the format considerably. Having said that, director Herbert L. Strock (who would go on to direct 1957’s I Was a Teenage Frankenstein) explained – in an interview with Tom Weaver – that the 3D seemed rather effective at the time, with audiences screaming out during the climax. Who knows, then, maybe I’m just cynical.
Other than its bright colour photography (which is very pleasant to look at), Gog is visually unremarkable. Scenes are staged flatly and without character.
For any review of Gog, it would be remiss not to address the robots in the room. The “Gog” of the title refers to one of two robots: Gog and Magog. These twin contraptions perform tasks when instructed to, and eventually turn murderous when NOVAC goes berserk. They look similar to the early concepts for Doctor Who‘s Daleks. One of the machines even sports a flamethrower attachment, reminiscent of the ones used by Terry Nation’s creatures in both the 1965 serial, The Daleks’ Master Plan, and the Peter Cushing film of the same year, Dr. Who & the Daleks.
Despite its flaws, Gog is a very watchable film. Even though the ideas played with are tinged with overt Cold War anxieties (many of them reactionary in nature), the film’s vision of futuristic possibilities is still fascinating. Even as just an artefact of a different cultural reference, Gog is well worth checking out.
Ethel Cain is the project of 23-year-old singer-songwriter Hayden Silas Anhedönia, who grew up in a conservative Florida town and currently resides in an old church in rural Indiana. Having left the Southern Baptist community at 16, a few years before she would come out as trans woman, Anhedönia started experimenting with music under the moniker White Silas before inventing the persona of Ethel Cain, who she describes as “the wife of a corrupt Preacher.” She developed her sound through a series of ethereal, lo-fiprojects, but her new EP, Inbred, marks a clear shift in style: though still written, recorded, produced, and mixed almost entirely by Anhedönia (with features from emo-rap artist lil aaron and Wicca Phase Springs Eternal), it’s her first after signing to the publishing and management company Prescription Songs, which includes her own imprint, Daughters of Cain – a reference to the mother-like figure she represents to her listeners. The 6-track project deftly showcases Anhedönia’s dynamic vocal range, pairing her harrowing lyrics about toxic relationships and self-image with live drums and distorted guitars that make the music sound even more like an exorcism. But this is just the beginning for Ethel Cain, whose story will be fully explored in an upcoming project – a massive, two-and-a-half-hour album she plans to release next summer along with a novel and eventually a feature film.
We caught up with Hayden a.k.a. Ethel Cain for this edition of our Artist Spotlight interview series to talk about her influences growing up, the origins of Ethel Cain, her relationship with her followers, Inbred, and more.
One of the things that drew me to the sound of your new EP is its versatility –there’s still thatethereal, dreamy vibe that defined the Carpet Bed and Golden AgeEPs, but there are more elements of rock and country and even hip-hop while still staying very much within the goth realm. I’m curious what kind of sounds you grew up with and how your influences have developed over the past few years.
When I was growing up, my mom was in choir. She loved Christian music – that was really all that we were able to listen to. We listened to a lot of late 90s, early 2000s Christian rock synth-type music, like Michelle Tumes, Nichole Nordemann, lots of stuff like that. Obviously choir music, because we would practice for choir all the time around the house; my mom would play Gregorian chant CDs in the kitchen while she cooked. The one non-Christian band that my mother loved was The Carpenters, which is funny because I hated The Carpenters when I was a kid and now I love them. My mother had the cultural hold over the house – she was like, “What I say goes,” and, “These kids aren’t allowed to do anything that isn’t Christian.” So the the only taste of non-Christian music that I think I got was, my dad would listen to country music in the truck, he would listen to Johnny Cash, Keith Urban, he loved Lynrd Skynyrd. And so he would play that in the truck all the time whenever it was just the two of us driving around, like when we would go hunting or whatever. So it was a very interesting dichotomy between, like, Christian church hymns on repeat and then the little bit of country that I’d get in the truck whenever I was out with my dad.
That was pretty much it until I hit – I think I was about 12 or 13, I saw a Kidz Bop commercial, and they were playing ‘Hot N’ Cold’ by Katy Perry and the melody was so infectious. It was like the first pop song I’d ever heard in my life, and I was like, “What is this?” And so I went to my grandma’s computer and I looked it up, and I just went down this rabbit hole of pop music that my mother was like, “This is evil, you cannot listen to this,” but I would sneak listen to it on my own at my Mimi’s house. And then at the end of high school I started diving into more alternative music – decades of classic rock, hip-hop, the rest of the the country music world, all this music that everybody loved and my friends knew that I’d never known about. It’s been kind of like, each year that goes by I pick a new genre and get into that. Right now I would definitely say it’s classic rock; I keep buying, like, Guns N’ Roses and Def Leppard Greatest Hits CDs and blasting them in my truck. But it’s been a lot of music to catch up on since I left the church.
What stuck with you the most when you were discovering more alternative stuff?
First off, obviously I loved my pop music when I was first finding “secular” music, as my mother called it. It was just what was on the radio – I didn’t really have any friends who had cool music tastes to show me, so I would just listen to what was on the radio. But as I got more into social media in high school, they started introducing me to like, Florence, who became my biggest musical inspiration of all time. They introduced me to Lana and Marina and the Diamonds and HAIM and Imogen Heap, all these more indie pop artists. And then from there I was able to dive in even further and started discovering more underground artists, and then it just kind of exploded from there. But I would say if anything stuck with me – when I was in high school, I listened to a lot of really dreamy electronic pop, and there was this one band, their name was Kye Kye, which is funny because they are Christian band, which I found out recently. But they make this super lush, dreamy, just huge dream pop, and they have this one album called Fantasize, and I bought the CD I think my junior year, and I don’t know what it was, but that album just stuck with me. It was just the dreamiest thing I’d ever heard. I was like, “I have to make music like this someday.” It reminded me a lot of the Christian synthpop my mom played growing up. I would say that was probably my biggest takeaway, at least in my high school years. Nothing really sticks anymore – it’s just kind of in one ear and out the other, there’s so much new music coming my way all the time.
You mentioned discovering all those artists online – I know that you grew up in a small town where there’s obviously a strong sense of community, but were there any kind of communities outside of that, in online or artistic spaces, that you found yourself gravitating to?
Before high school, no. We pretty much hung out – I was homeschooled my whole life, and so there was a group of other homeschooled kids that went to the same church as I did. There were probably about maybe 8 or 10 of us and I was friends with a couple of them, but it was like my whole life until high school when I – I think I signed up for Twitter the summer before my freshman year. And that’s when I started finding friends and I was like, “Oh my god, there’s other people in the world that exist.” The very first community that I would say I was ever a part of was the Florence and the Machine fandom, or the Flos, as we called ourselves forever ago. It was just a group of like 14-15-year-olds, and we all were just obsessed with Florence and the Machine and that was my first social circle outside of my hometown, it was just all these kids from all over the world; I had friends from London, I had friends from Singapore, I had friends from South Africa, all these kids were coming together and that was my first real experience with, like, a friend group, a social community, and it was really exciting. They taught me a lot of stuff. I’ve met a couple of them in person now; I’m still friends with a lot of them. It was a really interesting little branch off into the real world.
I think a lot of people in our generation had similar experiences in online communities. You mentioned Twitter – I’m curious what role Tumblr played, because I know you still have a blog on there.
Yeah, I was not popular on Tumblr at all. And I was always so jealous of the girls who were popular on there. I wanted to be them so bad. But I just love Tumblr, like I honestly hate Twitter to death, I just can’t leave. I feel like I’m trapped there forever now. But Tumblr was such a cool little community of artists and, you know, now everybody’s left that website so it’s just pretty pictures and that’s it, which I love that even better. I think I saw somebody just describe it as “media without the social” and I was like, “Ah, perfect!” But I would definitely say that Tumblr was my favorite in high school. It was just weird – people on there were batshit crazy, like fully unhinged, and I loved it.
Did you feel like pursuing art and music, or even just engaging in those communities that were so different to what you were exposed to, did that feel in any way like a reaction to the sheltered upbringing that you had? Or was it just a different type of community that you felt more connected to?
Oh, 100%. I mean, these were the people who opened my eyes to the way the world works, you know. When you live in a small Christian community, it’s like there’s all these almost cult-like reaffirmations that like, “This is wrong, this is right.” And they hide a lot of stuff from you, you know, you have no idea what’s going on in the world. I was 12 or 13 getting on Twitter and meeting the first queer people I’d ever met in my whole life, meeting the first people who weren’t Christians. And so they definitely opened my eyes because all these kids were from different places around the world, all these new cultures, all these new aesthetic subsets – just everything, everything in the world that I’d never known about was coming at me hard and fast. It was almost overwhelming; I felt like I’d been like living in a snow globe my whole life and I was like, “What is going on?” But it was really beautiful to know that there were things out there that you could get into and be interested in. I felt like some little child who’d grown up in the woods seeing a car for the first time.
How about the music-making aspect of it?
I think I wrote my first album when I was like 15, I wrote it on this little Casio keyboard I had in my room. It was right after I found Florence. And you know, growing up it was choir music and that was it and I wasn’t really inspired to write it, because I didn’t want to just, like, write hymns – which is funny, because now I do. And when I found Florence, I was like, “What the hell, this is the craziest shit I’ve ever heard,” so I sat down, I tried to write an album, I wrote probably 20 songs in this little notebook because I wanted to be her so bad, I wanted to make music just like her. And so it was all these new things that were coming into my life, I was like, “I have to write music about this.” I didn’t put out my first mixtape until I was 19, so it was other four years, but yeah, it was definitely that moment when I was like, “Okay, there’s a huge world out there,” and making music was the easiest way to kind of make sense of it all for myself.
Did it feel very much like a private thing at the time, like a personal form of expression?
Oh, yeah. When I first started making music, I didn’t share it with anybody – I mean, those songs I don’t even think that I showed my mom. I think I showed her one song and that was it. But yeah, it was almost more like a diary, so I never put anything out. I think it was my first mixtape when I first posted music online, and I was just kind of like – because I’d been complaining to my best friend, I was like, “I want to be a musician.” She was like, “Well, you have to make music and I actually put it out to do that.” And I was like, “Okay.” So I made some songs, I put them on SoundCloud and people liked them, you know, my friends were like, “Oh my god, this is so cool, you should keep making music.” And so I made my first mixtape I think in three months, I had like 15 songs and I put them all out. And I was like, “Wow, that felt really good. That feels very vulnerable but also super exciting to have my music out there like that.” It was such a rush, and so I was like, “I have to do that again,” and so I put out another EP four months later, and it was even more exciting, so I was like, “Okay, I have to keep doing this.” And then I kept doing it, and you know, here we are.
I’m interested, from that point on, in the genesis of Ethel Cain. I know that you used to go by White Silas, and in an interview last year, you said that the moniker represents the trope of the corrupt Preacher’s wife, which came from wanting to explore “the intersection between my experiences in the heavily religious American South and my dreams of the wild and free American West.” First off, is that still how want Ethel Cain to be perceived?
So, just to preface, I have been working on my debut record as Ethel Cain for the past three and a half years, and the way that I see Ethel Cain is in the context of that record. Ethel Cain to me is not as much Inbred, it is not as much Golden Age, as it is my record. So the vision that I have of Ethel Cain cannot be fully realized until that record is out. So it’s been kind of, like, biting my tongue with the way people are perceiving my EP, which is no fault of their own, you know, you can only know about an artist as much as they’ve put out. But the fully realized, “unhappy wife of a corrupt preacher,” all of that will be fully explored with my record. It is a concept album, it is full American gothic – I’m moving back down South to shoot all the visuals, like, it’s a story. As I was White Silas when I started the record, I’ve changed name since to better realize that record and bring it to life. But Ethel Cain to me will always be that Southern preacher’s wife, man-eater, cult-leader, freaky bitch; that’s who she is to me. She is a character – at first I kind of was like, “Okay, well do I portray her as being me?” But I was like, “No, I am not Ethel Cain. Ethel Cain is character, Ethel Cain is a project.” And after realizing that she was a character, I was looking at, “Well, now I can fully dive into her mythos.”
I can’t wait to see that vision be fully realized in the context of the record. But I still think it’s interesting to talk about it, at least in concept. One thing that struck me about the way you talked about it is how you seek to combine the two worlds that you grew up with, rather than kind of leaning more on the idea of freedom or escapism, but instead integrating that archetypal, religious imagery. Is it more of an attempt to subvert or reclaim those tropes, or is it an earnest way of clinging to your roots?
I think it’s both. I do love clinging to my roots – I mean, I grew up in the South, I love the South; I love the way that it looks, I love the air, I love the water, I love the trees. I love that very honest, hardworking, simple lifestyle that everyone around me had, you know, it’s just honest living. There was a period in high school where I wanted to run away to a big city and be a big city girl and go to clubs and party and be this crazy avant-garde person, but then as I got older I was like, “I don’t really think that’s for me, I don’t really think I would do well in that environment. I really just want to go back down outh and live in the woods.” So it’s definitely, like, sticking to your roots, but it’s also a reclamation. As time went on, I was like, “I’m gonna revisit this, but I’m going to revisit it in a way where I’m in control of that.” And so Ethel to me is an imagining of what I wish I could have been; I always say she’s all-powerful, she’s in control, and nobody can do anything to her that she doesn’t want done to her. And so I kind of made that the embodiment of what I want to be, and now I work towards that through making music as Ethel Cain. She’s just kind of, almost like a mood board of what I want to be like as an adult, what I want to be later in life.
It’s interesting how that extends to your fanbase as well, because obviously, they call themselves “the daughters of Cain.” I’m curious how that started and whether you embraced it right away.
That kind of started when I was in the Florence and the Machine fandom. Everybody called Florence Mother, and I always thought that was funny, the idea of this ethereal person being this mother figure. So when I started making music and developing Ethel Cain – for one thing, it sounds cult-y, which is kind of the aesthetic of the project, and almost like a weird, twisted, comforting wing. You know, “Come to Mother, Mother will take care of you,” that whole thing. I wanted it to feel very personal, and when people would message me, when I started to get people listening to my music that were beyond my friends, they would call me Mother, and I was like, “Okay, this is weird, I’m like 20 years old, but okay.” But it kind of just stuck, and I found myself taking on that role in the project; Ethel became this very, like, cooing, deep, soft-spoken woman who’s like, “I’ll take care of you, come here, let me wrap you up in my arms,” and, “Listen to this music, everything’s gonna be okay.” She’s like a mother to all these wayward daughters. I love the idea that Ethel Cain has all her daughters and they’re this big scary weirdo family living out in the woods.
Coming from the Florence and the Machine fandom, which was so important to your own growth, how does it feel now to have created your own community? Because you also have a very interactive relationship with your fans.
I honestly love it. Like I said earlier, music has always been very personal and very kind of secretive for me, so it was very scary to put it out online and luckily I have been blessed enough to have people who love it and who listen to it and resonate with it. So I felt like it’d be very selfish for me to not interact with them, you know, if they’re having discussions about my music and trying to discuss it with me. I love that there are people in this world who are passionate enough about my music to be so outspoken in their love for it, and it’s like the bare minimum I can do is to just be as interactive with them as possible. It’s another reason I like to call them “daughters,” I feel like the word “fans” is so impersonal. Some of them I’m pen pals with, we write letters back and forth, you know, I get on Instagram Live and chitchat with them, talk to them on Tumblr, it’s just so fun to interact with them. I’m like, “Oh my god, these people are like real people who are having experiences with my music like I have with other people’s music,” and that constantly blows my mind. So I love to get to know them and I really do consider us to be like a big family. You know, there’s not a ton of us, but the people who are here are very in love with the project and I’m in love with them.
At the same time, I get the sense that you’ve always had the ambition of becoming famous – if not you as Hayden, then Ethel as a character. And obviously, you’ve been getting more and more traction with each project. First of all, how does that feel, especially compared to the tight-knit community that you’ve built over the past few years? Are you afraid of losing that bond?
Yeah. I mean, just to start in the beginning, I do hope that Ethel becomes famous. I hope that my music and my art reaches as wide as it can; I would love to offer to people what has been offered to me through the art of others. I don’t ever want to be famous. I am terrified at the thought of being so on display and just available to the whole world to pick apart whenever they want to, you know. I don’t ever want to get to the point where I can’t, like, walk down the street or just exist normally in the world with other people. I think putting celebrities on a pedestal is so ridiculous, because I don’t think anybody is that important. So while I would love for people to know my art, and I would love to leave some kind of an artistic legacy on the world, in my own little corner, I as a person, I as Hayden, hope that I never get famous. I actively pray against it.
But with the community, I definitely do fear losing that kind of touch with people. The very first tour that I’m trying to plan is like a dive bar tour, because I want to make sure that venues are small. I don’t know if I could ever handle playing a stadium; I love being on the floor, same level as people, looking them in the eyes, singing – not even singing to them, singing with them. I do fear losing that closeness with people if this project gets that big. But I guess I’ll just do what I can, you know, as much as I can handle.
You mentioned Lana earlier, which I wanted to touch on, because your aesthetic has been compared to hers. But as you yourself have talked about, even if there are similarities in terms of the ethereal sound or the nostalgic aesthetic, it’s kind of a superficial comparison, because she’s more associated with the glamour of the American Dream, whereas Ethel Cain stands on the opposite end of that, in a way. Could you elaborate a bit on that, and more generally what you think the message behind the project is?
First and foremost, I definitely was hugely inspired by Lana when I was in high school; Born to Die I think was the very first CD that I ever bought. At first when I listened to Born to Die I was like, “Wow, this is like this really good American Dream, it’s so glamorous, it’s like old Hollywood,” I loved it. But then as I got older, especially with the social justice movement and the unravelling of the American Dream, the unravelling of Hollywood, the unravelling of celebrity culture, it was kind of like, it’s all a sham. All that glamour and old opulence is built on the backs of hard-working people who will never get the recognition and it’s just a facade that you start to see through. That, coupled with stuff I saw growing up – it’s just not all sunshine and rainbows and roses and diamonds and whatnot, you know, it’s like, fucked up, it’s ugly. And I was like, “I don’t want to portray that, I don’t want to portray some kind of glamorous, beautiful persona. I want something that’s raw and freaky and scary because to me, that’s what America is.”
I know that your album is your passion project right now, but could you talk about what your headspace was like going into this new EP? Did you already have the album concept in mind?
The album has been fully written since before the EP started, so it was a completely separate project. It actually started off as an 80s throwback synthpop EP last February, and then COVID hit and I was like, “Everything sucks, I want to die.” [laughs] And so the sound of it completely changed. I was like, “Okay, I’m no longer feeling bright and bubbly synthpop,” I was like, “Misery! Suffering! Heavy guitar!” And so, it was a completely different EP up until November. I went down to Florida to visit my friend, Alex, formerly Yah Wave, who did ‘Knuckle Velvet’ with me on Golden Age. I went and stayed with him and we worked on the EP for a whole week, and then I went home back home to Indiana. And I was like, “I hate all of this, I literally hate it,” I scrapped the whole EP and I wrote the entire new EP in like three weeks; I wrote ‘Crush’ and ‘Unpunishable’ the same weekend, I wrote ‘Inbred’ and ‘Two-Headed Mother’ the next weekend.
So I started over from scratch, and… obviously, I am from Florida, this was my first winter in Indiana, and it was a very bitter, harsh winter of just sitting in my room in the middle of the night. It was freezing cold, I was listening to the wind howl outside my door, the snow was up to my waist, we couldn’t go anywhere. It’s green and sunny year-round in Florida, I was not used to being snowed in. And I was just sitting in my room and it was miserable. I was like, “There’s a pandemic, I’m snowed in, everything is miserable and dark,” and it was so, like, oppressively depressing. And I just sat in my room, playing that out into songs.
Inbred, to me, is very much a depiction of how 2020 went. It starts off with ‘Michelle Pfeiffer’ and ‘Crush’ and it’s very light and bouncy and bubbly, and it’s very split in the middle. It was almost like perfect timing; it was July 1, the very first day of the second half of 2020, I had to go to the hospital because I literally thought that I was like going to die, like I don’t know what was going on, but I had this crazy panic attack and I kept passing out, it was like all this crazy shit. And it really set the tone for the second half of 2020 for me, because I went from just kind of chilling during quarantine, spending time outside, and just everything was nice and sunshiny to like, immediately I was in the hospital, panic attack every single night, I had COVID, my physical health was just awful, I was getting ready to move out of state and leave all my family and friends behind, like all this crazy dramatic stuff was happening. And that’s why the second half of the EP is very dark and moody; I just wanted to capture that sonically.
It’s actually the next thing I wanted to bring up, how the EP is split in the middle. I mean, I couldn’t have imagined it was such a direct reflection of your experiences, and I’m sorry you had to go through all that stress, but you’ve definitely captured it sonically. And the rollout has been interesting as well, because if you’ve just been exposed to the first two singles, which are the first songs on the EP – they’re both great, but it does not prepare you for what’s about to come. With the third track, ‘God’s Country’– I mean, it’s eight minutes long, it’s a duet, the sound is ambitious, the lyrics are so evocative. Was embracing that bigger sound just a reflection of your headspace, or was it something that you always had in mind for the project?
Oh, yeah. I’ve always loved a louder sound. I’m so inspired by super lo-fi emotional music, and I always try to sit down and write something like that, but every time it just gets bigger and bigger and bigger. As I sit and write it always starts off so small and quiet and very personal, but then as it goes, it’s like I literally can’t help it, I just get overwhelmed with emotion. As I get more into the headspace of writing, it just kind of all flows in until at the end of the song I’m just, like, screaming and yelling and wailing and it’s just this big crashing moment. And it’s definitely where my headspace was at – I remember right before the shit kind of hit the fan last summer, we were in the middle of lockdown, I couldn’t see my friends, I remember I was going out into these fields and into the woods and just these long stretches of fields and paths in the 100-degree weather and I would put my headphones in and I would listen to my own demos and I would run – I would run as fast as I could. I don’t even know why, I think it just felt good and that’s how it felt when I was making the music as well; I felt like I was just running, I don’t know what I was running from, I don’t know what I was running towards, it was just hot and I was delirious and it was just, like, a cacophony of everything that was happening in life. And that’s kind of what ‘God’s Country’ specifically was, I was like, “There’s a pandemic, I’m leaving my home, I’m getting older,” you know, I was overwhelmed and it just kind of came out in this explosion of a song. And I love to use a lot of reverb, I love to use a lot of big drums, I just want it to sound as big as possible, but it’s like, it’ll never be big enough, because how are you supposed to capture the expanse of human emotion and the world in a song? But like, goddamnit if I’m not trying to.
That feeling, whether it’s running or listening to your demos or the finished product, is it like an emotional release for you?
No, it definitely was. With songs like ‘Head in the Wall’ and ‘Golden Age’, it’s kind of that moment especially when I perform live, I always put them at the end of the set and it’s just me on stage, eyes closed, and it’s like you’re letting out almost like a battle cry and it’s so cathartic because the music is loud and you’re surrounded by people, or you can be surrounded by no one at all, but no matter where you’re at, it’s just like, “This is it. This is just me and the world right now.” I don’t know how to describe it fully, it’s just this beautiful moment that when I close my eyes I just feel like I’m there in that field and the sun is beating down on me and I’m like, “Oh my god. This is what life is. This is what life is supposed to be. I could die right here and I would be happier than ever.” And I think there will always be an element on every release of mine that has a song that’s like that, where it’s like, “This is it. I’m letting go. This is… This is life.”
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity and length.
Ethel Cain’s Inbred EP is out April 23 via Daughters of Cain.
Maxwell Byrn, Australian singer-songwriter better known under the moniker Golden Vessel, has developed numerous mellifluous projects since he entered our radar, most prominently his 2020 album colt which featured such tracks as ‘that’s us’and ‘midwest’ — to name a few. At Our Culture, we are proud to premiere Golden Vessel’s latest song, ‘getforward.’
‘getforward’ is an intricate ten-minute song co-written with several of his friends, The Nicholas, Emerson Leif and Japanese Wallpaper. It’s accompanied by a short film shot in the deserted streets of Lymington, England, by Australian video director Harry Deadman who also worked on music videos for ‘Less~More,’ and ‘MOONSTONE.’
Giving us more insight about the piece Golden Vessel said: “I noticed that especially in the last year I’d been gravitating to songs with longer run times that made a nice accompaniment whilst I was cooking or driving or staying calm throughout last year. I decided I wanted to try my own take on creating something that was longform but simple. I started ‘getforward’ from some Tascam-tape recordings that my friend Rutger (The Nicholas) sent me while I was on a writing trip in northern NSW. After forming the song, I sat down with another good friend of mine Caleb (Emerson Leif), and we wrote the chorus for the song. It was exciting to make something that had room to breathe, and I decided I wanted it to be perfectly 10 minutes long. I then got Japanese Wallpaper to record some final details on the song to help finish it off. It’s pretty simple but lyrically it boils down to just trying to be present and not get carried away with future thinking so much.”
Watch the music video for ‘getforward’ below before its release tomorrow.
Cleaning leather jackets can be a challenging task. Though leather is hard wearing, it requires to be taken care of. Moreover, it does not respond well to getting wet. Most of us need a few tips to care well for our genuine leather jackets.
The Basics
Many leather garments have different kinds of linings to offer warmth and top-level comfort. Leather garments have a silk lining. In such cases as your favorite men’s black leather jacket, the outer layer of leather can be cleaned using a damp cloth. This is followed by dubbing with some leather-specific cleaner. When you want to stop the interior from smelling sweaty or smoky, go for the right type of cleaner. If you cannot carry out the task of caring for the leather jacket yourself, take it to a professional. In any case, it is possible to do the cleaning of leather jackets at home.
Going into the Details
Cleaning the outside of the leather jacket
It is necessary to check the inner lining or the inside of the leather jacket to find the instructions for the care of the jacket. The label will specify whether you should take your leather jacket to a professional leather cleaner. There are different types of leathers involved in making leather coats or jackets. No single method is entirely effective for the cleaning of a jacket. Moreover, it will be rather costly to get the professional cleaning of a leather jacket.
Ensure that you get advice from several leather care websites that will give you standard advice. Test a leather cleaning solution on an inconspicuous part of the leather jacket. Do not specify where you can test the actual solution. Turn the cuffs inside out and test the cleaning solution on the cuffs at first.
If you find that the leather changes the colors
Lightens
Darkens
Do not use the leather cleaning solution as it might cause permanent color changes. Even if you want to clean with plain water, make sure you test it on an inconspicuous part like the inside of the cuff of the leather jacket.
When the water forms beads on the leather jacket and does not get absorbed, it is safe to use plain water to cleanse the jacket. It is best to use a cloth dampened with a solution of aniline mixed in water to clean naked leathers.
The other cleaning methods
Mild soapy solution:This solution is used for cleaning the outer part of your jacket and is one of the highly preferred methods of leather jacket cleaning.
Olive oil:This oil is recommended for several websites for cleaning and conditioning leather apparel. A cloth is dabbed in olive oil and applied on dirty parts of the jackets, and lifting it up. However, if olive oil gets soaked into the leather jacket, it will cause permanent damage to the appearance of the leather jacket.
White vinegar: Equal amounts of white vinegar and olive oil are mixed. A clean cloth is dabbed with the solution, and it is used for cleaning the leather jacket.
Starch or talcum:Sprinkle cornstarch powder or talcum powder on the grease-stained areas of the leather jacket. The powder will completely absorb the grease. Rub the area so that all the grease gets soaked up in the powder. Pat dry to take off the powder.
Cleaning of the coat liner
An essential point about jacket cleaning is determining how to clean the jacket liner. The coat’s liner is directly exposed to the skin of the arms and will soak up dirt and sweat due to the same.
Spread the coat liner inside out on the floor. Now vacuum it. It will remove the dust, dirt, and smoke from the jacket. After vacuuming the jacket, let the air out of it for a while. To get rid of lingering odors, spray the leather apparel with some clothes freshener. However, be cautious not to spray on the leather parts.
Things to Avoid
Do not use detergents directly on the leather jacket without doing the patch test. And if stains persist, consider taking them to a professional leather cleaner.
Things to Do
Remember, conditioning your men’s black leather jacket with saddle soap holds the key to making it look anew every time you wear it.
Conclusion
It is important to take care of your genuine leather jackets carrying out frequent cleaning using the right ingredients. Most of the time, ingredients like cornstarch or talcum powders are available at home. However, when it comes to using mild detergents or even plain water, exercise care to ensure that the liquid does not affect the color and properties of the garment in the long run. After all, you want your all stylish black leather jacket to stay with you for a long time to come. And the good thing is, if you are a proud owner of several trendy bomber jackets for men, you can get them to stay with you for a lifetime with the right care.
Saddle soap is highly useful for conditioning your jacket and making it look fresh and new for years to come. Cleaning the inner lining is important to make the leather jacket get rid of odors, grime, and dirt. It is especially important to do people cleansing the jacket before storing it.
With the fast rise of the online gambling industry, which was worth USD 59.6 billion in 2020 and is expected to reach USD 127.3 billion by 2027, it is important to remain responsible. In the UK, the Gambling Commission has already taken measures to ensure the safety of its citizens. There is an abundance of casino platforms and the Commission works towards ensuring they are all adhering to the laws and regulations stated in the UK Gambling Act.
How Is the Commission Making Gambling Safe?
For an online casino operator to be able to provide its services to British players, it needs a licence from the Commission. There are various requirements these operators need to meet in order to run gambling software on their websites. Following the handout of the licence, the Commission continues to carry out reviews and visits, and takes preventive action if necessary. However, that is not all they do. They are also allowed to make major decisions when it comes to the industry itself.
This was the case of the announcement made last year that players were no longer allowed to make deposits at online casinos using credit cards. Following research that suggested people were getting into debt because of their credit card use, the new rule was put into place. To keep customers safe, PayPal and other e-wallet providers have also contacted their customers regarding the latest changes. On top of updating regulations frequently, the Commission also offers guidance on how people can stay safe.
Tips to Ensure You Are Gambling Responsibly
Players have access to a lot of information on how to gamble responsibly, both through the Commission’s website and third-party websites. They can read this article to discover the steps to take to ensure safety at all times, as well as where to get help in case they need it. Before that, one of the most important steps is to choose an online casino that is licenced and that offers secure gaming. Things to look out for include secure payment methods, such as PayPal, an SSL encryption of the website for added security, and high-quality games from trusted software providers.
Once you have made your decision regarding the online casino provider and the types of games you are interested in playing, set a time and a budget limit. To avoid unexpected problems, a fixed budget is a great solution to ensure you are not spending more than you should. Having a time limit would also help with managing your bankroll, and it would give you enough time off to enjoy the activity responsibly and safely every time.
Ensuring responsible gambling in the UK is not just the Gambling Commission’s duty, it is also the key duty for online casinos. Because people are using their platforms, it’s also their responsibility to promote responsible gambling. They do so by putting certain services into place, such as activity alerts, deposit limits, time-outs, and limiting access to those who need it. This responsibility of keeping people safe is not in the hands of just one platform or one organisation, it constitutes a team effort regarding everyone involved in the industry.
For some people, the idea of working in an office every day from 9 to 5 is never something they have aspired to achieve. If you love the theater and all things creative, then spending your working day in an office is probably your idea of a career nightmare. For many creative people, being unable to express themselves and constrained by the boundaries of a regular job can feel stifling. If you are hoping to follow a career that allows for self-expression and lets your creativity flow freely, then you may have come up against some barriers to making this happen. As a career in the performing arts is often considered an alternative choice, making your career dreams a reality can feel incredibly challenging. Although your job aspirations are not regarded as mainstream, this does not mean that you cannot enjoy a long and successful career in the theater. Here are some of the ways you can build a career in the performing arts and follow your dreams:
Consider Your Options
Your first step towards a career in performing arts is to consider your options. Working in the theater does not necessarily mean that you have to be front and center on stage. Instead, you may prefer soaking up the atmosphere of theater life from behind the scenes. There are loads of behind-the-scenes roles available, from theatrical makeup artists to set designers. Or, you may prefer to put your writing skills into practice and write your own play. With so many different choices to consider, it is worth taking your time to decide which is the right choice for you.
Build Your Experience
When you have considered which aspect of performing arts you would like to work in, you will need to start building up your experience. You may choose to take part in small-scale productions in your local area or with your school. Alternatively, you could put yourself forward for work experience at a theater near you to get a better feel for the job. Once you have experienced working in the theater first-hand, you may decide that you prefer to be performing on stage or choose to take a different backstage role. Gaining experience is the only way to know for sure which position is best for you.
Study for a Performing Arts Degree
Gaining a recognized qualification, such as a performing arts degree, is an excellent way to build your industry knowledge and gain the skills needed to pursue a full-time career in the arts. There are many different performing arts degrees available, so you will need to do some research to decide on the right course. One way to determine which college to study at and which course to take is to research the faculty staff. You may find prominent names in performing arts working at specific schools, such as Travis Preston of CalArts. Attending a school with an inspirational and highly-regarded figure brings many learning opportunities and an added touch of prestige to your studies.
While it’d be false to say that humanity is moving away from physical possessions, ownership of the strictly digital has become less of a trend and more of a guaranteed future for many of us. Streaming services like Netflix and Spotify are replacing DVDs and CDs while video games increasingly come via subscription services such as EA Access or PlayStation Plus.
Put another way, in an unlikely throwback to the days of Blockbuster Video, we now rent the majority of our entertainment – and don’t really own much at all.
Monetisation
Of course, there have always been examples of entertainment as a service, but more reliable broadband meant that there was no longer a need to lose valuable storage – both virtual and physical – to a game or movie collection. Casinos, too, have taken the same approach, scrapping the bulky downloads in favour of an on-access model. For example, Jackpot City Casino claims that the only thing required to play its online slots is a compatible device and a stable internet connection. From there, you can access a varied library of online games, including slots and classic table titles, without the need to download any software or packages.
The kind of service provided by these entertainment companies is just a beginning though. While Netflix still doesn’t have a way to reliably monetize its packages, and so is likely to change its offering in the future, others are shifting from single purchase products to a Software as a Service (SaaS) or free-to-play (F2P) structure. This will result in either a subscription model for entertainment or a free service dependent on advertising revenue.
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Digital games outsold physical ones for the first time in 2020. This development could have been predicted from the previous year, however, when EA claimed that half its sales were in a digital format.
The publisher, much to the distress of its customers, has been experimenting with new purchasing models for quite some time. Its F2P efforts have often resulted in disaster though, as they tended to show up in full-price games. Developer 2K also forced advertisements into its $60 basketball franchise.
It’s a little frustrating that bad faith interpretations of the F2P model may end up validated by the model’s popularity in future video games. Mobile developers have been especially guilty of over-selling the ‘freemium’ way of paying things to gamers.
Experimental Phase
All the above seems to confirm that entertainment is still in an experimental phase, at least as far as how and when content is delivered to the customer. For instance, Microsoft recently backtracked a little on its SaaS-based Office 365 by promising a one-time purchase option of Office 2021. Digital ‘renting’ is here to stay though. There’s simply much more revenue to be earned from an ongoing subscription than through a once-a-year purchase.
Entertainment has always been cyclical. While DVDs and CDs perhaps don’t hold much long-term appeal, cassette tapes and vinyl records both made a return to sales strength during the past decade. In the near future, it may be that only collectors’ editions and steel books remain as examples of entertainment’s physical past.
Video games are not just a matter of fun and entertainment. Although the first reaction is always pointed at children, teenagers, and younger adults, gaming actually has a much wider reach and overall cultural influence.
It has become a social concept that makes a huge impact on the way people perceive the world around them. Video games have started influencing different aspects of our lives, from daily communication to lifelong learning.
As such, gaming makes a profound impact on the global culture and it deserves to be properly analyzed in a well-structured article. Our goal is to determine the influence of video games on culture, so keep reading to learn more about the correlation between these two phenomena.
What Is Culture?
The topic we are writing about may seem simple at first, but let’s stop for a moment and think about the concept of culture. Do you know what it really means and implies? In order to help you understand the topic clearly, we need to explain it thoroughly.
By definition, culture represents an integrated pattern of human knowledge, belief, and behavior that depends upon the capacity for learning and transmitting knowledge to succeeding generations. It is only one among many definitions, but it comes down to the following factors:
Culture determines social rules and norms
It represents customary beliefs
It encompasses common attitudes and values
It is often a synonym for arts and humanities
Culture clearly has an overwhelming influence on the world around us, while video gaming remains one of its major contributors.
The Current State of Video Gaming
If we want to analyze the impact of video games on culture, we need to know just how big the gaming niche really is. First of all, we have to say that gaming is a gigantic business that covers everything from £5 min deposit casinos and online bookies to arcade games and the latest VR titles. In other words, gaming encompasses thousands of games in dozens of niches.
Secondly, the number of gamers worldwide is growing steadily. According to the report issued by Statista, there were over 2.7 billion gamers around the globe in 2020. It doesn’t mean that each of these gamers is playing video games every day, but that doesn’t matter – it all comes down to the fact that one-third of the world’s population is interested in video games.
This basically means that gaming directly influences at least one-third of the global population, but it has a profound effect on other people as well thanks to its all-around cultural impact.
How Does Gaming Influence Our Culture?
We’ve seen the definition of culture and presented a brief overview of the video game market, but now it is time to discuss the practical impacts gaming has on our culture. We pinpointed a few important features here, so let’s dive straight into the subject.
Video games influence gaming as such
This may seem a little too obvious at first, but let us explain it to you. Once upon a time, parents would tell their kids to go out and play. Fast forward to 2021 and you’ll realize that video games totally changed children’s playtime habits. Instead of going out and spending time with friends in the real-world environment, a lot of kids are staying home and playing video games instead.
Gaming influences other types of media
Video games have become so popular that they started influencing other types of media. You can now watch many movies based on fictional video game characters such as Lara Croft, Hitman, Sonic the Hedgehog and so on. Bands and musicians are regularly composing songs and entire albums for video games, while TV series follow the trend with game-like shows such as The Guild.
Video games (do not) lead to socialization
Gaming makes a serious impact on socialization, but it represents somewhat of a double-edged sword. Firstly, it is clear that video games help kids socialize over the Internet because gamers share the same passions and interests. On the other hand, hardcore gamers often neglect real-world socialization and rarely ever see the light of day. It’s a big issue in the 21st-century culture, but it’s hard to determine the winner in the match between positive and negative socialization effects.
Gaming encourages competitiveness
A typical gamer is highly competitive because he is used to giving his best. This makes video games similar to casinos with no deposit bonus codes – everybody who starts playing is eager to make the most of the game. The gaming universe is highly competitive and it is becoming a part of our everyday culture.
New communication models
Massive multiplayer online games are the most important segment of the gaming market and they impact the way people communicate, too. The point is that team members have to maintain regular communication while playing, so they use all sorts of channels and communication models. For instance, they exchange messages via live chat and use webcams to establish face-to-face communication in the digital environment. This type of communication quickly spread outside video gaming and became a regular tool in everyday human interactions.
Video games contribute to the development of learning
Finally, video games make a substantial impact on learning and education. Developers now create tons of games with the goal to help kids learn something new in a more entertaining and engaging way. This makes a beautiful addition to the field of education and we expect to see more of the same trend in the years to come.
The Bottom Line
Video games have traditionally been associated with kids and teenagers, but the whole phenomenon earned much broader attention due to its improbable impact on the global culture. But culture is an all-encompassing concept, so we had to analyze the influence of gaming on culture from different points of view.
Of course, this is not the end of the discussion, but rather an invitation for all of you out there to join the topic and share your opinions and ideas in the comments section. We are looking forward to hearing from you!
AUTHOR BIO
Chris Bell is a worker of Gamblizard who lives and breathes sports betting and online casino games. He is a gaming expert and knows pretty much everything about slots. He writes blog posts about virtual gambling, but his true passions are literature and classical music.
