In the forest of independent music where trolls can spring from isolated rocks and mountains, it is refreshing for gatekeepers to allow through the spirit of an understated musical Seonaidh.
So from the serene shores of Loch Lomond and the remote Outer Hebridean Isles, come WITCH OF THE VALE. Comprising of the folk inspired stylings of Erin Hawthorne and the stark instrumental structures of her husband Ryan Hawthorne, their music possesses some Pagan fervour like GAZELLE TWIN meeting ‘The Wicker Man’ and ‘Twin Peaks’.
Despite being largely unknown within general electronic music circles, the couple’s musical potential have certainly been noticed and rewarded with support slots for CLAN OF XYMOX, SOLAR FAKE and ASSEMBLAGE 23.
Beginning their debut four song EP ‘The Way This Will End’ with the unsettling ritualistic overtures of ‘Fever’, a stark percussive lattice and drone laden backdrop holds together a sinister Celtic beauty through Erin Hawthorne’s treated vocals.
With another alluringly timeless vocal, the traditional overtures of ‘Your Voice’ take a gentler pace over a simple triple backbone. Meanwhile ‘Deathwish’ does what it says on the tin, as heavy stuttering beats and distorted synths take hold; again it’s all threaded together by an enticing high register gothique.
Closing the EP with ‘The Way This Will End’ title track, an angelic air is offered within a backdrop that has a beautiful music box quality complimented by solemn strings, capturing a wonderful melancholic airiness.
This fine debut EP from WITCH OF THE VALE is a total pleasure. Totally captivating while maintaining an important air of mystery, Erin and Ryan Hawthorne are most definitely an act to keep an eye on for the future.
“Seonaidh, I give thee this cup of ale, hoping that thou wilt be so good as to send us plenty of seaware for enriching our ground during the coming year.”
Following the success of her highly acclaimed ‘Unflesh’ album, Elizabeth Bernholz made her conceptual art as GAZELLE TWIN complete, with its continuation in ‘Out Of Body’ originally commissioned by the London Short Film Festival in 2015.
But the elusive artist saw a string of life changing events, one of them being her move “far out of the city”. Relocating to the good, old England countryside, would seem the right move to enjoy more pastoral matters, the joys of quaint, idyllic countryside, while residing amongst animals and flowers, knitting and making jam.
Of course GAZELLE TWIN would do none of the above. Instead she nitpicked on the absurdity of our existence, no matter where we are located. And her latest long player ‘Pastoral’ says it all, from the striking Deutsche Grammophon referencing artwork co-conceived with Jonathan Barnbrook and beyond.
Elizabeth Bernholz chatted about her “deranged, absurd reflection of deranged and absurd times” in deepest Old England.
The four years since ‘Unflesh’ was a rather busy period for you…
Yes it was, much of that time was spent touring the ‘Unflesh’ album worldwide and working on new or offshoot projects in between. It was a fantastic two years of adventure and fun, and then I fell pregnant towards the end of 2015 with the plan to take break to write for a couple years.
If ‘Unflesh’ shocked, ‘Out Of Body’ only cemented the feeling, aren’t you worried some will simply not get you?
No. Being understood has never been a concern of mine, least of all with what I create.
You like a bit of dystopia, as shown in ‘Kingdom Come’?
A brief look into the history of art, literature, or film shows us that fictional projections of dystopia often prove to be like prophecies. Ballard was known as “the seer of Shepperton” for just that reason. I wouldn’t say I like dystopian ideas, but that I feel that there is great truth in them.
So there was the big move out of Brighton? Why was this purely for domestic reasons or had there been artistic motivations too?
The decision was purely financial, if we didn’t move out of Brighton, we would not be able to tour ‘Unflesh’ around America, Canada or elsewhere and still keep our day jobs going or our rent paid. It was that simple!
And it was an opportunity that we did not feel we had much to lose on, as we thought we could easily move back to Brighton should we wish to. Ha! No chance now.
And in the depths of the idyllic countryside, are you still “hypersensitive to everything around (you) all the time”?
Yep. It’s just the person I am. It’s useful for a creative sensibility, as I don’t need to look very far for inspiration. I can literally find it anywhere! It’s all about being able to tune in (or out).
How are you observing the state of the country post-Brexit and the shenanigans in the US of A?
People are still people, they flock together with others they feel safe to be neighbours with, and those boundaries get more and more protected when people feel afraid or threatened by something. That is happening on a mass scale right across USA and Europe, and it is alarming to see the way that people are responding, but I don’t think it’s anything new.
And the red and white 21st century jester outfit just sums it all up…
The idea is that the Jester is the base figure upon which there are layers of traditional clichés and modern clichés applied. It’s no singular thing. The Jester adopts different characters, it caricatures, it imitates and mocks and mongers fear… that is how I see the red imp. It’s a multi-puppet.
The football mascot twist adds an extra sinister quality, is this a statement on mob mentality?
Not specifically no, but of course there is a lot of meaning behind those aspects and they are there to make a point – my focus here is on contemporary clichés, and the demographics that are pandered to but also scapegoated by the tabloid press, depending on their agenda.
‘Better In My Day’ and ‘Little Lambs’ are just fierce, even more aggressive than anything that was on ‘Unflesh’?
I very much wanted there to be a sense of mania and relentless energy running through the album. I think it’s important to have that rhythmical hook for live performance, but also to be able to work up a frenzy. It’s all part of the mood I’m trying to create and get myself and the audience completely immersed in.
‘Glory’ comes over like creepy GOLDFRAPP, how did that shape up in the studio?
I would say that the musical influences prevalent in ‘Glory’ are pretty far away from GOLDFRAPP to be honest, they are not a band I really have ever listened to at all. What I had in mind on this particular song was something closer to Scott Walker or even Bowie on ‘Low’. I wanted to harness a kind of towering, God-like voice. The barebones of the track was actually an unused demo for ‘Unflesh’. I think I started with a bassline and built from there, I hadn’t really planned on making a song in that style, for this album at all. I felt very far away from melodic drama at that point but the song just sort of grew into itself and worked as the centrepoint of the record.
You continue with the heavy vocal processing on ‘Pastoral’, what decides the tone of voice for each track and what effects to use?
Vocals often come last in the production chain, so it usually depends on the theme and the mood of the song and what I feel it needs texturally or rhythmically… whatever I can bring to it through vocal technique and / or manipulation I do as much or as little as needed.
You continued the experimentation with the musical side of things, from medieval instrumentation to rave culture… how did you come to experience these two very different forms originally?
Early music seems to have always been a part of my musical education and palette, but I think this is probably the first project where I felt it was truly relevant to the themes I was working within. The rave culture, or more specifically – house and techno influence really came from being a younger sibling to a brother and two teenaged sisters growing up in the 1990s when illegal raves were happening all over the countryside near where we lived. My experience of that was secondhand, but nevertheless quite memorable. The music frightened me, because it was all very alien at the time.
How will the upcoming ‘Pastoral’ live presentation differ from ‘Unflesh’ and ‘Kingdom Come’?
In terms of production value, the ‘Pastoral’ tour is not so different from the ‘Unflesh’ set-up. It is simple and direct, noisy and strange. But there’s more smiling 🙂
What are your hopes and expectations for ‘Pastoral’?
Well I am already pretty blown away by the response to the album.
I never expected to sell out of vinyl and CDs within the first week of release but just that has happened, and I am stunned and exceptionally happy.
The last four years has been a really long and rocky journey full of dramatic life changes, and there have been plenty of times where I felt I may never return to touring, or get the opportunity to release music in the way I was able to in 2014. I am pleased I have been able to do all the things I set out to do with this concept and that it has already been so well received.
I hope that there will be a great run of live shows worldwide this coming year and beyond and that I can hopefully open up some more opportunities for making new projects.
ELECTRICITYCLUB.CO.UK gives its grateful thanks to Elizabeth Bernholz
Warsaw New Theatre (3rd October – ‘Kingdom Come’ performance), Manchester Soup Kitchen (5th October), Brighton Attenborough Centre for the Creative Arts (11th October), London Somerset House Lancaster Rooms (16th November)
As innocent and idyllic as the new album title from GAZELLE TWIN sounds, those who are well familiar with Elizabeth Bernholz’s previous output, won’t be fooled.
The queen of all things weird and wonderful is back after the highly acclaimed ‘Unflesh’. ‘Pastoral’ should be glorifying her new found life in the depths of Old England, a move amidst other life changing events; instead, it “exhumes England’s rotten past, and shines a torch over its ever-darkening present”.
No matter what century we live in, the evil, greed and consumption have gone full circle, no matter “What species is this? What century? What atmosphere? What government?”, as questioned with choral voices in the opening ‘Folly’, with the intro like DEPECHE MODE’s ‘The Great Outdoors’ played backwards.
If things were indeed ‘Better In My Day’, which is proposed in a house / rave notion with the additional twists from frenzied electronics, then “the world with jobs, no foreigners, no locked doors and kids full of respect” was “much better in my day”.
The tribal sounds of what promised to be lovely and cuddly in ‘Little Lambs’ is nothing of the kind. Almost ritualistic, the mantric rhythm sounds scary, and the “little lambs” are us: the little island dwellers, fed lies and distractions to keep us away from the bigger picture. “Save yourselves” the synthesised voice warns, before ‘Old Thorn’ ushers the “multi-gender voices, in vernaculars old and new” as if.
‘Dieu Et Mon Droit’, sung with a KATE BUSH poise, crown the otherwise sad state of affairs described here. Bernholz’s vocal goes male on ‘Throne’ in monophonic rhythm, spitting out words with disgust: “Scratching, Picking, The wound, Bleeds, Pus, Flows, Sticks, Stinks”. ‘Mongrel’ describes a new breed of humans and the new behaviours which are ridden with self-assurance, opinionated yet easily offended over nothing, but it suits them. The opening questions from ‘Folly’ return, “What species is this? What century?”
The glorious Old England won’t come back as in ‘Glory’, delivered in the style of ZOLA JESUS goes mediaeval. The Wiccan imaginary beaten out of the drum ritual sees new found sounds and experiences Eastern influences in the plethora of styles, each as distant from each other, as they are close.
The meeting in the good Old English ‘Tea Rooms’ won’t bring the illusion of “pastoral picture”; the reality is far uglier than the idyllically drawn “hedgerows and steeples” or “cattle, tearooms”, because there’s also the “roadkill” and the village square sees executions as well as happy country summer fetes. ‘Jerusalem’ mocks the “ideal citizen”, with the sneer from the riddler, while ‘Dance Of Peddlers’ utilises early instrumentation in the form of recorders intertwined with courtly jester music, spitting out the truth at once: “It’s the Middle Ages, But with lesser wages”.
The first single from ‘Pastoral’, ‘Hobby Horse’ is as deranged and as mysterious as any work of GAZELLE TWIN, but this time she spells it out: “Pack on the loose but I can’t let them in here, My fears are growing, My wounds are showing, My time is up I want to get the f*ck out of here NOW”. She mocks ‘Ye Olde’ and ‘The Everyman’ of the English cliché, brandishing a sneer and a hobby horse.
Certainly not the ‘Sunny Stories’ expected by the title, it’s “All your history’s happened now”, mystically performed with a compelling, eerie vocal, whistling in the country winds and reverberating in the darker skies, with no stars present. Darkness, just darkness out there…
Maybe a better life lies ‘Over The Hills’, a happy country song delivered while riding and we are back to the “good old days”, where “King George commands and we obey”, and there are still “Flanders, Portugal and Spain”, even if they’re getting further and further.
Elizabeth Bernholz hasn’t disappointed in the “deranged, absurd reflection of deranged and absurd times”. Her village square isn’t a source of empty joys, her country cottage isn’t the perfect, magical place and her Old English neighbours aren’t the friendly country folk, ready to help in need.
No, there is horror in every idyll, and danger lurking beyond the ‘quaint’ and she’s not fooled. She will sit there in her red 21st century jester outfit on and make you laugh! I’m sorry, did I say laugh!? No, she’ll make you reflect and cry over the state of affairs, but only if you choose to see it.
Gent Vooruit (20th September), Station Narva Festival (22nd September), Warsaw New Theatre (3rd October – ‘Kingdom Come’ performance), Manchester Soup Kitchen (5th October), Brighton Attenborough Centre for the Creative Arts (11th October), London Somerset House Lancaster Rooms (16th November)
Keeping her privacy well under wraps always seemed rather important for Elizabeth Bernholz aka GAZELLE TWIN.
The concept of portraying herself via her music, instead of physical looks surely speaks for itself. “This is me” she says, through the animated noises, quirky sound manipulations and captivating imaginary, both audio and visual. Not a stranger to artistic enterprises, such as her ‘Out Of Body’ project and its predecessor, ‘Unflesh’, Bernholz isn’t the one to dissect her musical directions, “explain or justify my work to anyone, least of all try persuade someone to persevere with it if they don’t already have the desire to do so”.
For those after easy listening pieces of electronica, GAZELLE TWIN is not at all suitable; one won’t find gentle, beautifully orchestrated musical gems, catchy hooks and the challenges of “what can this synth do for me” type. What you will find is: reflection, politically charged landscapes, metaphysical elements and the most unusual sounds, painting utopian visions of the world of today.
While ‘Out Of Body’ dealt with the beauty and ugliness of our mortality, with the intricacies of how our bodies work, the crude physicality of the shell versus the mind, ‘Kingdom Come’ looks at the devastation of modern societies and the very social diseases that eat away at nations and individuals.
Based on the eponymous book by JG Ballard, the father of dystopian modernism, who in music has influenced everyone from Gary Numan to Madonna, ‘Kingdom Come’ is a thoughtful representation of how the corporate greed and misplaced alliances alienate individualism and crash what’s truly important, all the while eliciting the tribal and primal behaviours from, otherwise docile human beings. Homosapiens are violent predators, lead to believe we have an alternative. If Ballard’s notions felt unpleasant, GAZELLE TWIN likes to “get under the skin of those ideas, because they are bizarre, and uncomfortable.”
The audio visual experience was first commissioned for Manchester’s Future Everything festival; ‘Kingdom Come for Two Vocalists’ saw the production from Bernholz performed by Natalie Sharp, also known as LONE TAXIDERMIST, and Stuart Warwick. Dressed in a mixture of sharp business suits and gym outfits, the pair run the rut of life on treadmills, getting nowhere. The life of work, controlled leisure activities, contrived fun and artificial happiness ooze from the performance, which has now been presented in an audio mini-album of seven tracks.
Opened by ‘See How They Run’ with its haunting aura of dread, it is followed by galling ‘Metro’ ,quoting the utopian truths such as “choices are compulsory”, uttered in frightfully distorted mantric voices are deeply disturbing. Next, the machine gunned out ‘The Suburbs’ continues the feelings of danger and inability to escape the reality, while the cinematic ‘I Consume Only’ emulates the voice of a Catholic father preaching the mass of never-ending greed , “I can suck you dry”.
‘Hallowed’ deafens with a paralysing sound of horns, suppressed female vocals and the occasional sigh of struggle, or is it sexual? It matters not, it’s all monitored by the state, right? We are all on the ‘Death Drive’; a fast paced road to nowhere, where’s the end of it? Death is the end of it. To summarise, ‘Cling Film’ covers it all, in a further rise of unnerving sound elements and frightening voices.
GAZELLE TWIN feels dystopia as a theme is here to stay for a while; after all it’s an indefinite source of inspiration, and the world events observed unfolding daily certainly can’t provide the alternative. And what’s the alternative? Socialism? Religious freedom or anarchy?
Elizabeth Bernholz’s conceptual approach to music has reached higher levels.
It is weird watching two vocalists on treadmills, uttering sometimes indescribable sounds, crying out mutilated words and twisting in agony of something incomprehensible may feel peculiar; but what an interesting approach to portray the wrongs in this world.
ROSEMARY LOVES A BLACKBERRY is the multi-faceted Russian musician and artist Diana Burkot.
Part of the Anti-Ghost Moon Ray collective that brought the world GAZELLE TWIN, BERNHOLZ and ANNEKA, Burkot’s debut album is entitled ‘❤’, because in Burkot’s own words, it is “an image that cannot be spoken, at a time when visual aesthetics are the priority”.
Like with OMD’s recent single ‘Isotype’, it is a sardonic commentary on how communication has now been reduced to emojis and likes, thanks to the soulless overreliance on social media.
As if to reinforce this concept, the previously unveiled ‘Purr’ is shaped by a gentle conceptual slice of leftfield while its accompanying video challenges “Self-identification through social networks” ?
ROSEMARY LOVES A BLACKBERRY first came to wider attention via the ‘Annual General Meeting Record – Volume 2’ cassette which featured her label mates as well as I SPEAK MACHINE and NEAR FUTURE, a side project of BLANCMANGE’s Neil Arthur.
That particular track ‘Play or Pay’ features on ‘❤’ and like an artier LADYTRON circa ‘604’, it’s a brilliantly screechy percussive set piece with eerie vocal stylings from Burkot that add mystery and intrigue. Meanwhile, the GRIMES-like ‘Plastic Soup’ continues with that mood.
‘❤’ actually starts with ‘Røst’, an enigmatic instrumental comprised of unsettling atmospheric layers, but this is not wholly representative of the rest of the album.
‘Drumly’ does what it says on the tin but with drum machine and kooky rolled vocals, while the explicitly titled intensity of ‘Spring’s Sh*t’ actually comes over as a joyous piece of reverberant electronic experimentation.
Beginning with a big bass drone, this artful intent is also omnipresent on ‘A Song for Theo’s Animals’; the buzzes and electric shrills over a noisy percussive collage are offset by Burkot’s soprano and a swimmy string machine. Not to be left out, the dramatic boom of ‘Debris’ sits well within its surroundings.
Although not for everyone, ‘❤’ is a promising debut from ROSEMARY LOVES A BLACKBERRY that captures today’s darkness while also projecting a witty angelic innocence.
Delightfully odd, short but sweet, this is a work of stranger things to savour.
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In the forest of independent music where trolls can spring from isolated rocks and mountains, it is refreshing for gatekeepers to allow through the spirit of an understated musical Seonaidh.
says it all, from the striking Deutsche Grammophon referencing artwork co-conceived with Jonathan Barnbrook and beyond.
album worldwide and working on new or offshoot projects in between. It was a fantastic two years of adventure and fun, and then I fell pregnant towards the end of 2015 with the plan to take break to write for a couple years.
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