INTERVIEW: Softcult

Inspired by their love of 90s alternative music icons Bikini Kill and Smashing Pumpkins, Ontario-based duo Softcult blend atmospheric guitars, energetic percussion and bittersweet vocals to create their hazy, antagonistic sounds. Formed of twin sisters Phoenix and Mercedes Arn Horn, Softcult cut their teeth playing live shows in their local town of Kitchener, before moving on to bigger audiences on the North American tour circuit.

Their experiences of playing and working within a male-dominated music industry formed the foundation for their current sound, which is born from the desire to resist and relieve the pressures of existing in a patriarchal world. We caught up with Mercedes (guitars, vocals) and Phoenix (drums, production) to talk about their debut single ‘Another Bish’, their last gig before covid-19 hit, and what their dream festival line-up might be…

Hello girls, how are you both doing? Are you in lockdown in Canada at the moment?

Mercedes: We’re doing alright, we’re locked down like you guys are in the UK. It’s a lot of time to focus on music and writing and recording, so we’re very lucky that we have a home studio right now. I feel very blessed right now, because for some people I know, being in lockdown has meant they’ve been very unmotivated and unable to write, whereas that hasn’t been our experience at all. We’ve been writing and recoding loads and it’s been a God send to us, it’s kept us sane and active and motivated.

That’s good news! Let’s start at the beginning, who or what originally inspired you to start making your own music?

Mercedes: We’re twin sisters and we’ve been making music together forever. We’ve been in different bands over the years playing and getting some experience, but for this project we felt motivated by everything that’s going on right now. Having been in the music industry already for some time, we’ve experienced misogyny and sexism. At this point, I feel like this band has been put on this planet as a voice against abuse, or for people who don’t feel seen or feel like they don’t have a voice. A lot of our songs are about that.

We speak to lots of women who have unfortunately experienced misogyny in the music industry. Do you think your experience of it is somewhat heightened because you’re twin sisters? I only ask because I have younger sisters who are twins, and when we’ve been on nights out together before people have made inappropriate or creepy comments towards them without any hesitation…

Phoenix: Only another person who really knows twins would ask that, and it is so true. There’s a weird fetish around twins and it’s very creepy.

Mercedes: We find a lot of the time there’s insinuations about incest and weird stuff like that. I know a lot of women in bands who aren’t even related who have experienced that. Heart are a good example actually. The sisters in that band are constantly being pitted against each other and I think that happens a lot with women and siblings in the industry and it’s just so weird. It’s a definite downside to being a twin, but there’s also an up side too.

Phoenix and I have such a close connection and that helps a lot with our music. She’s always a step ahead of me, or finishing my sentences creatively for me. She handles all of the production side – everything we make is recorded and produced from our home studio. Then I handle all the stuff on the video/visual side of things and it just makes for a good team. There’s a closeness and and understanding and an empathy that we have from being twins, it’s not all just creepy dudes!

That’s true! Talk to me about your debut single ‘Another Bish’. What’s it about? How did you put the video for it together etc.?

Mercedes: The song is about misogyny. Phoenix and I hate the word “bitch” so we couldn’t even put it in the title, we literally felt skeeved out writing it down! The lyric “I’m just another bish that you’ll never tame” was supposed to be aimed at that typical misogynist dude who thinks all women are the same, and they’re there to be controlled and conquered. The song is from the perspective of the woman who’s sick of it and feels like the dog who’s finally going to bite its owner. It’s about fighting against that but also owning it. We noticed the type of guys who often say “she’s such a bitch” are just saying that about women who they think are outspoken. They just label them as “aggressive.”

For the video, we used paper cut-out clips of different women’s facial features – eyes, lips, nose – which we replaced with dog mouths. The dog mouths reflect the feelings of those guys who think that when you speak out about sexism you’re just some yappy dog who never shuts up. They’re also supposed to be a comment on how there’s so many double standards for women, not just in music but in the beauty industry as well. Women are having to basically try and be something that’s unattainable and if you’re not that thing, then they make out like you’re not trying hard enough. So we took those themes and put them into the video.

Are there any women in music at the moment who you admire who are standing up for themselves and not taking any sexist bullshit?

Phoenix: Laura Jane Grace from Against Me! – big time. We were just little teeny boppers when we first found out about Against Me! and we were obsessed. She’s a huge icon for a lot of reasons, but something I’ve always admired about her is that she is really outspoken about who she is. It’s so brave to go through the transgender transformation when you’re in a very male dominated space in a very male dominated music genre, and just rebelling against all expectations and being yourself. That’s a huge inspiration.

Do you remember the last gig you went to before Covid-19 hit?

M & P: Yes!

Mercedes: It was another music project that we in at the time and it was at this dive bar. It was in March (2020), right after the stay-at-home orders happened and we were trying to play our way home, but we realised we had to cancel everything because it was just not responsible to have shows. So it was our very last gig and the vibe was very depressing.

Phoenix: People obviously didn’t show up, quite rightly, and we just wanted to go home.

Mercedes: We actually ended up staying over at a girls house. Up until then we were just crashing on floors on the tour, we didn’t have hotels booked or anything like that. So this girl kindly let us stay at her place and made us pizzas.

Phoenix: We were like “are you sure you still want us to stay? It’s totally cool if you don’t, we can sleep in the van!” but she still let us crash.

Mercedes: Her Dad had all these cool guitars so we just had a jam session with her. So after a kind of depressing show, we had this jam session in her living room and it was probably the most uplifting thing ever. That was probably the last real hang time we had with anyone outside of our house since lockdown started.

When we can all hang out properly at a festival again, who would be on your dream line-up?

Mercedes: I keep watching all these old videos from Reading & Leeds festival and wishing we could play that somehow…one day!

Phoenix: We’ve watched the Reading & Leeds Veruca Salt set a million times!

Mercedes: We love the UK. Every time we’ve been there we’ve had such an amazing time. I think the scene for music in the UK is sort of unlike anywhere else I’ve ever been. The fans are so in to the music. They know the lyrics, they know about the meaning behind the little pieces of art on your albums covers – I feel like they’re really into it and that’s really cool. Our dream line-up would be a dope festival somewhere in the UK and we’d have Bikini Kill, Veruca Salt, Against Me! playing…

Phoenix: …and Radiohead, they’re one of my all time favourite bands.

Mercedes: We’ll play the opening slot at 11am so that we can watch all the other bands.

Good decision! Finally, if you had to describe your music in three words, what would they be?

Mercedes: Rebellious would be one, empathetic might be another. It’s not all just angry stuff though, sometimes it gets pretty feelsy and sad.

Phoenix: Fuzzy? (laughs). On the production side, people always think that distortion and fuzz are for loud music, which typically they are, but you can also make super dreamy, fuzzy distorted music and we try to do that as best as we can.

Huge thanks to Mercedes & Phoenix for answering our questions!

Follow Softcult on Spotify, Instagram, Facebook & Twitter

Kate Crudgington
@KCBobCut

 

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FIVE FAVOURITES: Aerial East

Described as a deeply personal coming-of-age record, New York-based musician Aerial East is preparing to release her poetic new album, Try Harder, on 12th February. Set to be released via Partisan Records, the LP tentatively explores East’s experiences of disconnection, loneliness, suicide, friendships, gender roles and breakups, whilst also embracing the simple beauty that life can unexpectedly bestow upon us.

We think one of the best ways to get to know an artist is by asking what music inspired them to write in the first place. We caught up with Aerial East to ask about her “Five Favourites” – five albums that have inspired her song-writing techniques. Check out her choices below and scroll down to watch Aerial East’s latest video for ‘Try Harder’ at the end of this post.

 

1. Joanna Newsom – Have One On Me
This album just keeps giving. When I first heard it in 2010 I had a really negative reaction to it. I was already a big fan having binged The Milk Eyed Mender and Ys after high school. A friend of mine made a comment about her during this time that was something like “I would marry her without even meeting her” and I followed an immature impulse to prove that she wasn’t that amazing by rejecting the overwhelming 3 disc record. By 2011 though I was feeling heartbroken and I found myself uncontrollably humming and singing ‘On a Good Day’, the most digestible song on the epic breakup record. The more heartbroken I felt the more I threw myself into the record. I must have listened to this album thousands of times – probably more than any other. It is so familiar to me and feels like home. It still makes me cry. My friend Kelly once said that she feels like herself when she hears it. I feel that way too. I still don’t always know what is going to happen next when I listen though. I haven’t yet memorized the lyrics, melodies and structures of the songs and that makes for stimulating repeated listens. I saw her perform again in 2019 and it sent me into a satisfying spiral of obsessively analyzing her lyrics and reading about her that really helped me think and write about my own songs.

2. Kate Bush – Hounds of Love
The Kick Inside gives this one a run for its money but Hounds of Love is the record I put on to cheer myself up when I’m feeling depressed. I actually first heard the song ‘Hounds of Love’ in high school when the Futureheads covered it and didn’t discover Bush until years later when I moved to New York. I was immediately drawn in when I first saw her dancing in the red dress video for ‘Wuthering Heights’. I remember thinking I had heard the song as a child but I later realized I was remembering ‘Come to My Window’ by Melissa Etheridge. Anyway, Bush’s videos are all amazing. I wanted to study mime for a long time because of her. I still kind of do. Hounds of Love is one of the best records ever made.

3. Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou – Ethiopiques, vol. 21: Emahoy (Piano Solo)
This record centers me. It was all I could listen to in 2016 and I don’t play piano but I wanted my record Try Harder to feel like this. I first heard it when I was working at Dimes, a restaurant I have worked at since 2013. I used to listen to it often while setting up for my night shift that the closing daytime server would put it on when they saw me arrive. Emahoy, homemade pizza, and David Attenborough got me through 2016. A good remedy for anxiety.

4. Joni Mitchell – Blue
I mean, come on. It’s so good! I actually didn’t get into Joni Mitchell until Teeny Leiberson and Rachel Pazdan invited me to perform in their HUM Joni Mitchell tribute show. There was a lot to dig into and I said yes obviously, but then I had a deadline to familiarize myself with her work – she is pretty prolific – and choose a song I wanted to sing. I ended up doing ‘My Old Man’ because I don’t really write love songs even though I’m very romantic and ‘Hana’ from 2007’s Shine, because I wanted to acknowledge her as a contemporary artist. This is one of those records that just makes me feel good when it comes on. It came out the same year as Carole King’s Tapestry and I like thinking about the two different song-writing styles. Tapestry has so many crazy big hit songs that you are like “wait, she wrote that song too?!” They are such perfectly written pop songs but Blue is full of weird idiosyncratic songs that only really make sense if Joni is singing them. I love both albums so much and I imagine Carole made more money off of Tapestry because those songs are so widely covered and licensed, but if I could choose I would rather have made Blue.

5. The Beach Boys – Pet Sounds
Beautiful melodies, beautiful harmonies, dizzying layered vocals, heart-breaking lyrics produced joyfully. I’m not sure if it was the first time I heard this record but I remember listening to these songs upstate and crying and everyone in the room politely pretending not to see. Pet Sounds was a big reference when I was producing my first record Rooms.

Thanks to Aerial for sharing her favourites with us!

Watch Aerial East’s video for ‘Try Harder’ below.

You can pre-order Aerial East’s new album Try Harder here.

Follow Aerial East on Spotify, bandcamp, Twitter, Instagram & Facebook 

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Introducing Interview: chika.

Through her playful beats and earnest lyrics, London-born, Oxford-based artist chika. creates intimate R&B sounds that reflect her personal experiences of growing up as a queer second generation Indian immigrant. Describing her music as “11pm on a Tuesday night,” chika.’s personality fizzes through on her new EP Unlearning, an exploration of heartbreak and self love which she’s self-released today (9th Feb.)

We caught up with chika. to talk about her musical inspirations, her anticipations for her new EP and her new music recommendations.

Hello chika, how have you been getting on during Lockdown 3.0 here in the UK?
Hey hey hey! Is this Lockdown 3 or 33? They’re all blurring together, but somehow, I’m making it through! I’m a uni student so term has been keeping me busy, for better or for worse, and I’m playing a virtual gig on February 19th – JoyRuckus Club 3, the biggest Asian music festival ever – which is sending reliable shots of dopamine to my brain. Big fan of the dopamine shots! finding ways to obtain them has been my method of survival during all these lockdowns.

That sounds good. Can you remember who or what first inspired you to start making music?
Honestly, I spent a lot of time trying to model myself after what I thought was the ‘perfect’ Asian daughter. I was studying law, going to legal events and genuinely despising my everyday existence. At some point, my ability to cope just…flatlined, I guess? I had a huge burnout, switched courses at uni and got diagnosed with ADHD (which explained a looooooot wow.)

Once I’d given myself permission to stop being perfect, I also stopped locking up the part of me that wanted to do music. As a kid, I wrote lyrics, sang a lot and constantly dreamed of being on stage and performing. I assumed that everyone just felt unfulfilled and daydreamed of being an artist. During Lockdown 1.0 I just automatically started writing lyrics again and found beats on YouTube to pair them with, and then like an uncontrollable snowball of happiness and good vibes I couldn’t stop myself from making music! It kind of feels like a calling.

So I guess my answer is… me? Therapy? ADHD? Ultimately, I realised that if I wanted to be happy in life, that was gonna include pursuing music.

Talk us through your recent single ‘gr8ful/h8ful’. What inspired it, how you recorded it etc.?
Ooooh ‘gr8ful/h8ful’! It’s the pre-release to my EP but actually the last song I wrote for it. I was dealing with some complicated relationship stuff, where both sides had their issues and I was vacillating between anger at the other person and a lot of self-blame and anger at myself, and then they told me that I should be ‘grateful’ for everything they’ve done for me. And sure, objectively that might be true – but in that moment the only thing in my head was: “?!?!?!?!?!?!? KJSAHKDSAHK how about nO, i will be HATEFUL, you don’t get to tell me how to feel!” And so the hook of this song was born. It’s a petty refusal to take accountability and a little childish (hence the formatting of the title). I recorded it at InspireSounds Studio in Oxford during our summer break from lockdown and got to work with a professional sound engineer for post-production, which was super duper exciting and such a huge quality improvement to doing it myself!

What are you anticipations for your new EP Unlearning? What are you most proud of about this release?
I’m excited as heck for Unlearning to come out. It’s going to be the foundation and origin of my music career (I hope), so whether or not it gets any exciting press or does numbers, I want it to be something I can continue to view with pride. That said, I’m keeping my fingers crossed that everyone who listens to it vibes with it as much as I do and that once covid is less of a threat, that I can perform it at some gigs. I’m proud of the variety of moods that this EP covers and just generally of having a professional-esque finished EP in my (digital) hands. It feels like it’s the start of the start of the start of something big, which sends little frissons of excitement and bounciness through my heart.

Are there any particular themes that have informed the songs on the EP? You’ve mentioned that it’s a reflections on a past relationship, but tell us a bit more…
Well, ‘gr8ful/h8ful’ is a retrospective “eff you” kind of track and then ‘SAVIOUR’ is much more of an “in the moment” realisation of how messed up and co-dependent a relationship has become. Those two tracks are both set during/after relationships, so kind of form a set in my head. ‘Real Deep’ is moving on from the previous two tracks; it’s forming an instant connection with somebody and wanting to know know know them in every way possible, diving in but with safety goggles on. And then ‘INCREDIBLE’ is healing from ‘gr8ful/h8ful’, taking in and processing the self-blame too and coming out the other side stronger for it and creating self-belief and being proud of how far you’ve come. I wanted Unlearning to feel like a complete story in and of itself, so hopefully it feels like a conclusion/resolution to the EP.

Do you have a favourite track on the EP? If so why?
I’m 50/50 between ‘SAVIOUR’ and ‘INCREDIBLE’ for completely opposite reasons! ‘SAVIOUR’ is a really vulnerable track that I was kind of scared about putting out there and is the most “still” track on the EP I think – like still water on the verge of something breaking the fragile peace, which happens by the end of the song. It’s the most delicate of the tracks and holds a pretty special place in my heart because of it. But then ‘INCREDIBLE’ is really “BAM! I’M AWESOME!” which is so fun to sing and perform! It’s a mood changer and so unrepentantly full of self-love and I take a lot of joy from it.

Are there any new bands or artists you can recommend we listen to?
I’m gonna try to narrow it down to just a few…

I’ve loved Dounia’s music since the very beginning and look up to her a heck of a lot! Think dreamy yet focused R&B with fantastic lyrics. She just improves and impresses me more with every release. I’d particularly rec ‘Playboy’ and ‘Renaissance’ from her.

There’s also Hope Tala, another artist whose song ‘All My Girls Like to Fight’ got me through a very stressful exam. I’ve been streaming ‘Cherries’ a lot, too. Hope Tala’s voice is so intimate and crooning and such a good experience. Finally, Ivan Furber just put out their first single ‘Stopping Time’, and the soundscape it creates really pulls me in! For fans of Florence and the Machine vibes with ephemeral visions and lyrics.

Finally, if you had to describe your music in three words, what would they be?
I’m the wordiest person I know so this is TOUGH, but…. “dialogue, intimate, unwavering.” I hope that makes sense!

Thanks to chika. for answering our questions!

Follow chika. on bandcamp, Spotify, Facebook, Twitter & Instagram for more updates.

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Five Favourites: Tyler Holmes

I’ve only recently become acquainted with innovative artist Tyler Holmes, but I have fast fallen in love with their poignant, affecting and utterly unique sweeping electronic soundscapes. Holmes (They/Them) is a singer-songwriter, visual and performance artist who uses music as a therapeutic device. Coming from a turbulent and traumatic ‘cult-like’ early life, they have spent a lifetime crafting their own Black, Queer narrative by pushing the limits of their imagination, Holmes envisions themselves as the imaginary child of Björk and Tricky, using a surrealist lens on a wide variety of genres, often blending diaristic narratives with dark, dream-like whimsy. Autobiographical and absurd, their writing is alluring and uncomfortable. Both brutal and beautiful, bringing the audience into a shared space of healing and catharsis. They perform with a constantly changing electro-acoustic arrangement, always finding new ways to showcase an intimate horror.

Ahead of the release of their upcoming new album ‘Nightmare In Paradise’ via Ratskin Records next month, we spoke to Tyler about the five albums that mean the most to them. Check out their choices below, and watch their latest video for single ‘Nothing’ at the end of this article. You can also listen to their recent rendition of SOPHIE’s ‘BIPP’ over on bandcamp now.

Mariah Carey – Butterfly
Butterfly was a departure for Mariah. A record that embraced Hip Hop and Mariah as a sexual and sorrowful entity, which I have always related to. I have always been obsessed with Mariah and I’ve been singing her songs for as long as I can remember. This was the first album that I would listen to all the way through, over and over and over. There is a real variety to the record and I can now see this as the first in a series of emotional breakdown albums (this one even has a song called ‘Breakdown’ which is unbelievably beautiful and rich and has the amazing Bone Thugs N Harmony guesting). The through-line through this quite varied record is sadness, longing and identity struggle; all running themes in my life and music as well. My favourite track is ‘Outside’ – about being a weirdo, just singing the melody makes me cry.

The Knife – Silent Shout: An Audiovisual Experience – Live In Gothenburg
Reinvention is something that always turns me on. This album was the electronic equivalent to dying your hair black and doing acoustic renditions of your record. The Knife was this mysterious band back in the early internet days and Gothenburg showcased them reborn in a syrupy goth trance inducing void that was even more mysterious than they had been. It was as if they had this colourful image and they thought “let’s give them even less information and appear in a black abyss as ghostly floating lights…” The songs are darker, gothic, stark and beautiful. Dance music made for crying and being a freak to maybe more so than dancing. I love a singer who can be different characters and Karin plays a whole cast on this record and a cast of ghouls, sea monsters, aliens and demons. She is so otherworldly, possessed and perfect. My favourite track is ‘Kino’, which I covered a long time ago. They took an old track and brought it back through the Pet Cemetery. The mourning in that song will haunt me forever.

Tricky – Pre Millenium Tension
A theme of coming back darker, and more vulnerable emerges. While Tricky’s first record was murky and muddy,Pre Millennium is obsidian. A dark smoke filled room. I love how Tricky always has two singers of varying genders singing the same lyrics at the same time creating one genderless or many gendered being. The opening song ‘Vent’ talking about someone hiding their lover’s medicine to watch them suffer and need them speaks volumes about the album in front of the listener. Very much about codependency, dark urges, self destruction. The gnarling, repeating loops grind nightmares into your head like noogies. The reimagining of ‘Bad Dreams’ by Chill Rob G gives the song a chilling, fever dream realness that is necessary and sadly timeless.

Astrud Gilberto & Walter Wanderley –  A Certain Smile, A Certain Sadness
I listened to this album on repeat while writing my new record. It’s vintage goth. Astrud Gilberto, best known for the timeless hit ‘The Girl From Ipanema’, is practically motionless. Her stoic and serious performance even over more dance oriented tracks like ‘Nega do Cabelo Duro’ really sets the tone without beating the listener over the head. There is a bittersweet breeze blowing through every song on an album that has some rather peppy tempos and almost chipper organ lines. The theme of the album is dark, not quite hopeless but almost. The opener ‘A Certain Smile’ sets the tone that, like love, peace of mind and temperament are cyclical. “That certain smile to haunt your heart again.” OUCH. ‘Smile’ is followed by ‘A Certain Sadness’ (JOKES!!!) that lays the cards on the table and directly discusses unrequited love, longing and depression. To me it is so interesting and inspiring to hear these jazz chords that have over time become associated with elevator music here set to such depressive and moody themes. Even the fast songs contain some really ‘ugly’ chords and organ solos that hint at a jazzy, almost punk antagonism that alongside the subject matter and vocal delivery make me really see Bossa Nova as a precursor to New Wave music (Bossa Nova means ‘New Trend’ or ‘New Wave’ after all.) ‘Tristeza’ and ‘So Nice’ are absolutely brilliant, tongue in cheek songs that in a heavy-lidded tone hint at a sunny life in a bitchy way that seem to me as sarcastic as they are dreamy.

Björk – Post
Choosing a Björk album to discuss is really difficult but this is probably the singular record that has influenced me the most. Eleven songs that are all different genres and on different planets. This record has such anger, such venom, such sadness and such spacious, calm, quietness. It is truly a rollercoaster masterpiece. It calls to mind Goldie Hawn’s famous line (from First Wives Club) about emotions “I’m an actress! I have all of them!” That’s what Björk showcases here; every emotion, texture, and sound in her body at the time and it is resplendent. ‘I Miss You’ is one of the best and most original takes on the standard longing pop song, with horn freak-outs, screaming, and a panic attack about “cuddles” for a bridge. The song sounds like a cartoon zoo where the animals train the humans just like the surrealist nightmare of a music video that is as amazing as the song. The album features one of my favourite songs ever; ‘Enjoy’, where mother weaves a bizarre love triangle over a beat made by one of her boyfriends at the time and one of my biggest inspirations: Tricky. The intimate tabloid lyrics are leaked over a beat that sounds like a jungle full of haunted wildlife that know your secrets and want to punish you with electrical torture. It’s one of the most titillating experiences you can have as a listener. An album that is full of so much motion and noise ends with the purely ambient ‘Headphones’. It’s built on barely there electronic bass notes and Miss Björk whispering about falling asleep to a transformative tape! I had this on cassette as a kid and it was a meta experience, this is one goal I have definitely taken from Mother. Her goal was to give others the same transcendental experience that music gave her, passing on the gift. Post is one of her greatest gifts.

Massive thanks to Tyler for sharing such beautiful words about their favourite albums!

Nightmare In Paradise, the upcoming album from Tyler Holmes, is set for release 26th March via Ratskin Records. Pre-order here. And watch the poignant video for ‘Nothing’ below:

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