When Boycotts Work: Arms, Hope and Soundtracking Brexit with Gazelle Twin

0:00Elizabeth Bernholz:Do boycotts actually work? When was the last time that you saw people, and musicians in particular, trying to hold power to account, trying to push back against the war machine, against the billionaires, against war crimes, against genocide, against all sorts of things happening around the world? When was the last time you actually saw action take place? Well the last time I really saw it happen and I really felt it was when Gazelle Twin made a stand against King's Place, a beautiful concert venue in central London that's based underneath the Guardian building. And they were going to have an arms event which was tied to Lockheed Martin and lots of other kind of companies that profit from war.

0:42Elizabeth Bernholz:and Gazelle Twin was artist in residence there and she wrote a really powerful letter joining a chorus of people who were pretty outraged by the fact that with everything happening in the world that King's Place, a place for art, a place for beautiful cultural events was gonna do this fundraiser and she not only stepped away from her residency she just put out this really powerful letter which I found incredibly moving so much so that I was instantly like right why don't I own any of your merch I've been such a big fan of her music for so long jumped on her merch stall and bought some merch and reached out to her and said when you're ready I don't want to do it like right in the aftermath of all the stuff that's happening right now let's have a chat on the podcast and I'm so thrilled that we waited a little bit because this is one of my favorite interviews I think I've done on the podcast I've been a massive fan of Gazelle Twins music as you can probably tell from this episode of the podcast I think what she does is both beautiful and disturbing and upsetting in times.

1:43Elizabeth Bernholz:It sort of soundtracks like the horror of these moments in time, but it also can be incredibly beautiful. And I love the discordance of what she does. I love the kind of sensory nature of her music. And I was really thrilled to sit down and talk to her about her past, her present and the future. We cover everything from MF Dune to Nigel Farage. And I think this conversation will give you some hope that if you do decide to stand in your power, to step up against those who are doing things which we as the people do not agree with then things can change as always this podcast the drowning sound podcast is brought to you in partnership with kobuzz and this week's playlist i've had so much fun compiling it's got loads of tracks from gazelle to end on it some of the music we discussed in this episode things like her remix of halsey which i absolutely adore there's a live track from david bowie backed by nine inch nails as his live band, which really feels like the kind of music that Gazelle Twin makes to me in my head.

2:42Elizabeth Bernholz:Like those two things feel like they go together. The kind of intense electronic music and elements of industrial music and cinematic sounds. And yes, she's done some amazing film soundtracks and game soundtracks and all sorts of things. And she's got lots more projects coming up in the next few months and years, which we couldn't get into in this episode because they're all embargoed because that's how big and exciting they are. So yeah, if you head to jeninsound.org forward slash playlists, you can find the playlist that I've compiled this episode and really just like bliss out to it because there's some great stuff on there there's also some pretty intense things on there like Bjork's version of Declare Independence which I absolutely adore and yeah if you head to joinersound.org forward slash playlist you'll get a free trial to Cobuzz who are on the Ethical Music streaming platform and we're so thrilled that they're partnering with us on this podcast.

3:28Elizabeth Bernholz:Anyway I'll be back at the end with a few more thoughts about this episode this is me chatting to Elizabeth aka gazelle twin at the shore studios in london enjoy

3:48Elizabeth Bernholz:i had some fun this morning i reread some of the reviews of your records and i think you might be one of the best reviews artists on dronin sounds like consistently like eights and tens oh wow Yeah, well, that's my memory of it too. And I'm very grateful, of course. So our audience will be a bit familiar with your music. I suspect many of them have been to see you play or have picked up on your records from all the great reviews you've had. And I think one of the reasons is there's this scene in Hot Ones where Jennifer Lawrence's mouth is burning and she's having the most joy of the sensory overwhelm.

4:24Elizabeth Bernholz:And I think there's something about what you create which kind of just like it's not overwhelming but it is overwhelming in like in the good way and the bad way at the same time and so I'd like to talk about the past present and the future of your music um and we'll start in the past um which pastoral was the record or I think you picked up kind of a lot of people's kind of intrigue and interest you'd been making music for a little while at that point. It was written in the aftermath of Brexit. What do you think you learn from making that record and talking about it, about patriotism, nationalism, the state of the nation, paganism, all these different things?

5:08Elizabeth Bernholz:There's a whole soup going on with the record. So it'd be great if you could tell people a bit about the record and some of the things you learned. Yeah, it's definitely a stew, I would say. I'd been stewing a while with some of those themes anyway and actually initially I was think I think my my in my phone notes which is where I make all of my sort of creative work in progress notes I think I wanted to make something about lifestyle I wanted my album to be some sort of vague lifestyle commentary you know consumerism type thing that I was sort of you know floating the ideas um some of the tail end of some of the themes from the previous album on flesh actually and then that kind of massive shift that I experienced moving from a city to a rural community in the middle of conservative kind of east midlands at the same time becoming a parent for the first time all of the kind of input was sort of like big shocks to the system, big kind of like cultural shifts in my kind of locality.

6:19And then what was happening politically with the then Conservative government, this kind of very hard turn, you know, into very patriotic kind of language, very, you know, lots of vitriol about immigration and stuff like that.

6:37Elizabeth Bernholz:It's like the breaking point Nigel Farage poster and people like Britain first being sort of normalized. All of those things all felt, I mean, literally you can tour with a lie on the side of a bus and still win. And then when you have one, those same people get elected and now be doing well in the polls. It's sort of a big shift in the country. And I guess sonically, you're perhaps best known now for soundtracking lots of horror films and quite intense thrillers. Like, is there any more of a like horror the national horror of Brexit of like that moment in time I think I was re-listening to the record and just thinking at the time I hadn't really joined the dots as much between like I know I'd heard you talk about it in interviews and things but I hadn't necessarily felt like you'd actually soundtracked the horror of that moment well I actually wasn't it wasn't intentional it wasn't specifically Brexit either.

7:36I think I'd grown up in rural setting before I'd moved as a young child, I'd grown up in a rural setting. And then again, kind of a sort of provincial setting. Then I'd been in the city and then I'd gone back to rural setting and I'd always been interested in history and I'd always been interested in religious music and Christian art and iconography. That was kind of like my sort of childhood was like choral music and classical music and English pastorals and in a way moving to a rural setting almost I was starting to form a picture of of what what it what is it to be English like what why are people you know so vehemently English and pro like what is it what have we really got you know I know what the you know the chocolate box image is I know what all of the sort of rose-tinted stuff is but what is the reality of it and And, you know, as the Brexit sort of bus was driving around and, you know, all of that stuff was raining down, it felt like.

8:34I was also experiencing, you know, the immediacy of my location, which was, you know, a rural village kind of stuck in time, obsessed with, you know, well, it's a big farming community. So there's, you know, there's lots going on in it. And in some ways, it's very industrial kind of setting in that kind of strange rural way. but the kind of common cultural kind of connections is is very much like a few decades above my age range and there's lots of focus on world war one memorials and you know some affairs and you know and then as you sort of settle into a place you start to you know you start to chat to the local people you start to hear some of that you know that kind of i don't want to say it's vitriolic but you start to hear the opinions of of your neighbors and you start to get a sense of what the common kind of perception is of you know politics or immigrants or whatever and I started to just feel things creeping in and I started to look at you know those religious religious art and religion and and history and I think the day it really hit home I went to the village next to us and I saw a pair of stocks in in the village square wow I had this wasn't this wasn't a Trump insurrection no this was not not used anymore you know that they're used actually now to like put the Christmas tree up each year and stuff but I remember just looking at it just thinking I've never really thought about it before but people probably well they were abused hurt and you know probably tortured there and possibly died there and they're still here and it's like this kind of and then we've got this sort of really quaint picture postcard thing of here's some torture equipment in a in a lovely you know village square and it just really it was that image that suddenly hit home and I just thought this is so horrible like everything that you can upturn and you don't even have to dig very deep is like it's based on torture it's based on oppression it's based on murder rape a lot of stuff directed towards women you know witches there's an incredible um famous story of some witches that were killed that lived around that area that um you know i looked into it all and i just thought this is with this brexit sort of packaging of you know thest george's flag colors um how manyst george's flags do you see on the way here oh there's plenty there's lots and lots of them yeah they're they keep appearing they don't last long though i don't think they were made in the uk oh right they're very cheap

11:07Elizabeth Bernholz:They're not great British flags. They're not great. They're certainly not made in Great Britain. But I just remember just thinking, what a hellish reality to our history there really is. What have we really got to be proud of? You know, we all know about, you know, the Crusades, slavery. It's like, really, what are we fighting for here? Did the PF people have forgotten all of this? Because I think, so I've, there's two different things that I'm oscillating in my head while you're talking about this. One is how the Welsh and Scottish sort of have like a rich history that they're proud of. And I feel like being English, we don't have as much of that.

11:45Elizabeth Bernholz:And obviously that is what's preyed upon by the kind of right wing. And then on the flip side, I spent a lot of the last few years working on a campaign called Stop the Tories. It was a tactical voting campaign to get rid of the government. Yes. We helped one and a half. Used that. Yeah. Thank you. We held one and a half million people vote tactically during the general election. and people like Marina Perkis, Carol Vorderman, Zoe Gardner, all of these activists, to me, they're so patriotic because they want a better country. And yet they're not defined by how many flags they're wrapped in or how big the flag is behind them in the background, like some of the MPs.

12:23Elizabeth Bernholz:And like, there's a guy called Femi who was really loud in a lot of the Brexit conversations. and he's so, he makes videos constantly. He's a content creator about politics. And I think he is so proud to be English and British. He's so keen for us to return into Europe, to be part of a bigger community. And he's like patriotic in such a different way than we understand it from how the far right have defined patriotism. And I feel like in an interesting way, your record because it taps back into some of that history that we have the bits of the history that we don't talk about as proudly as the world wars and like we there are indigenous people of england but they're not just white people they are people that have lived on the land and have a shared history and i think that you were part of a conversation that doesn't happen anywhere near enough about our national identity and it's not just fry-ups is it no but they are great yeah yeah and yeah I think that's really it's an amazing point you know that we can reclaim patriotism for something I do see it as a dirty word you know and obviously you know with stuff happening in the US it just feels like a dirty word but you're right you know like I'm quarter Welsh and I like saying that you know whereas I don't like saying hey I'm English you know I would never go and brag about being English but I quite like saying I'm a bit Welsh you know because it doesn't have that layer of toxicity to it you know and we've done that to ourselves to be fair I think but if you say you know if you're a musician and you're patriotic about what the you know what what English British artists have produced over the decades and what what we've what we've done you know for sort of music for example arts you know there's there's so much to scream about and to be to celebrate that 2012 olympic opening ceremony it's like that was like i felt quite emotional seeing like nhs nurses oh yeah frank turner performing on top of a mound and all the weirdness that it was i loved that it felt like such a celebration yeah it was amazing i feel quite disconnected from a lot of that and i think it's well it's seen as woke now isn't it yeah that's just woke if you're talking about you know nurses yeah i mean really that that it just feels like you can't go anywhere that isn't a very narrow you're awake to injustice and you care about people being treated bad yeah which is i thought how we all were raised all the good ones the opposite is yeah exactly yeah you're ignorant to injustice or you actually think the injustice was a good thing it's like it's very bizarre when you actually mirror a lot of the that phrase everyone says like every what is it every accusation is a confession it's like that like if you actually listen to the way Trump or Farage or Boris Johnson or any of those people speak, it's like they're constantly telling on themselves.

15:24Elizabeth Bernholz:Like the idea of paid agitators currently in America. And it's like, what? Like, do you mean that all of your people are paid when they turn up to this? It's, yeah, the thing that amazes me is that it's so obvious that they're crooks. And, you know, nearly all of the last Tory party, you just look at their eyes. It's in their eyes. You know, you cannot trust them. But not everybody has that. It's interesting. You didn't know what my next question was. But I was going to pivot quite hard and talk about how seeing Fever Ray kind of changed who you were as a musician. And I think I was at the show at Brighton Dome with lasers and things.

16:03Elizabeth Bernholz:Because I think I was at the same show. Because I think I'd been to see the XX in the afternoon, like one of their first gigs. Yeah, it was a festival that is no longer Loop Festival. Yes, it was. And I'd performed earlier that day as Elizabeth. That was my aunt's name for about a week. And that was me trying out my electronic pre-the entire city, my first album. Precursor to that, I was just trying it out at that festival. And yes, Fever Ray performed that evening. And then you were talking about the eyes. Your face disappeared for much of your career. and a lot of, for some people, this might be the first time they've seen who sits behind the jester mask and the different costumes that you've embodied.

16:49Elizabeth Bernholz:How freeing was it to find that? Was it masking and unmasking at the same time? Yeah. Yeah. I've come to understand it as that now. At the time, so that show, I'd just done that show and I'd done it feeling not great about, I was behind the music that I'd produced. The music was, you know, like, I would say, in my version of cinematic scale, you know, big themes. But I felt my delivery of it was hampered by my kind of frame and my pain sort of feeling of feeling exposed on stage. And feeling, I think, because I felt as a female performer singing, I felt I needed to present in a certain way. and it wasn't authentic for me to be performer.

17:42I hadn't had that much experience performing by that point either. But I just felt rotten on stage. I did not feel right. I didn't like that. And then sort of seeing Fever Ray in the evening, who, I mean, she literally could have been anyone under the costume. I think it was like a Nigerian shaman's costume and it's almost like a tent over the top of her head and there were some hands poking out, but it was just this monstrous silhouette really surrounded by lots of other very freakish sort of non-human looking characters and my jaw dropped and I knew the music already I knew the album because it was you know really out there but I just kind of thought oh my god I get it and it felt like I was in a film and I was like these lasers it's like a sci-fi horror like all the things I love in one place but live and it was just, I just couldn't believe what I was seeing.

18:37We also got to see sort of some of the backstage elements of Fever Ray as well. And just before they went on stage and it was kind of like amazing window into the two sides of this performance. Yeah, it was just like, okay. And I was aware of, you know, I was aware of people using masks in performance and, you know, using like, you know, Apex Twin, very common, you know, contorting his real face or you know using his face as a mask and things like that I was aware of those sort of shifts. Or like Daft Punk. And then I guess around that time was Deadmau5 and

19:11Elizabeth Bernholz:like Marshmallow and those people were probably around that time as well. Yeah and who's the MF Doom you know I was aware of like how cool that could be you know how cool it can make you feel as a performer so straight away I was like right that's what I'm doing you know I'm gonna I'm gonna be a puff of smoke or I want to be you know a silhouette of John Merrick the elephant man that was one of my obsessions at some I was like I love the elephant I just love the film but also the story you know and and so I just went I just went to town on like all the things that I could potentially be I'll never be the same thing again you know I'll be able to do whatever I want I'll be able to completely shift any gear you know anytime i feel i need to and embody you know the music that i want to make without people being distracted by me as a female white female apologetic you know person i was like i don't have to worry about it anymore i don't have to worry what i wear on stage makeup anything like that so it was amazing and you don't even do your hair when you're covered in a bodysuit exactly no i literally don't have to care about anything i even you know performed when i was pregnant and you know no one knew because i was covered in you know clothes um so it was like this brilliant sort of like anonymous kind of freedom and this is coming from someone who i love dressing up as a kid too you know i love costume fancy dress and everything so it's just like i get to do that in real life you know i get to do that legitimately and it wasn't until sort of second album in sort of um unflash in 2014 that I really personalized the approach to the costume wearing and that the costume became I started to realize that by using costume I was I was able to sort of present something that I was scared of or that I was using as my thematic you know basis for the music I'd be able to link that really distinctly um and And so in that album, I used my PE, school PE, or a sort of version of my school PE kit, which was like a blue hoodie, blue tracksuit bottoms, PE pumps, school PE pumps, black ones, if anyone remembers those, white socks.

21:27And then over the top, I had this, I'd worked out that I, because I wanted my face to almost be pixelated.

21:33Elizabeth Bernholz:Yeah. And not visible as, almost like a sort of Cronenberg film reference, like what the hell am I looking at? Like that isn't a human. It's not a girl. what is it and I wanted that kind of like confusion so I used some flesh colored tights really easy you know 99p pair of tights over my head hole in the mouth and a wig over the top of my hood and it was it was like this thing this creature had been born and the and that creature was me as a teenager at the worst point in my life yeah at the most vulnerable point in my life but I'd flipped I'd almost injected like this supernatural element to it so I was like I'm gonna turn the freak into a freak you know into a living breathing freak and the first few gigs I did with that costume it did I wasn't feeling that confident about it I was thinking most of the time like what the f am I doing this is just laughable I'm gonna get laughed you couldn't just pop to the shops after getting ready for the stage no and you know you let you go you go sort of people see you in your sound check and then you come out and the sound engineers are like yeah what so I wasn't feeling that confident but but after a couple of shows I realized yes this is exactly what I needed to do you've now made me wonder what did Slipknot feel like the first time they turned up to rehearsal I would love to be the war when they first like did a show or something it's like what how would that have this like they would have evolved into they might have had like really homemade suits and stuff.

23:10Elizabeth Bernholz:Yeah, you have to start somewhere. So we hear a lot about eras because of Taylor Swift and it feels like with each of your projects, am I right in thinking you're sort of not perform the work again in a different persona? Is that sort of how that project's done onto the next one? Generally, yeah. I mean, I come from a classical-ish background and if you're like a composer which I am and was and wanted to be the traditional composer composes music for other people to perform or composes an opera that goes off and is performed by other people and it goes off on tour and I kind of thought well why can't I do that why can't I be why can't Gazeltowin be like a thing where I might perform it or other people might perform it and it's different every time 10 different people have worn the bodysuit and gone on stage.

24:04Yeah, I've just been sat on my couch for the last 10 years. Well, I did do that once. I did do that when I had my first son. I had a proxy that went out. I was very transparent about it for a show that was commissioned just at the point I'd become pregnant. And I just thought, well, hey, this is something to try out. Let's do it. And so I wrote this album, Kingdom Come, and I knew I wouldn't be able to perform it because I'd be heavily pregnant and then due to have a baby. So I enlisted Natalie Sharp,

24:38Elizabeth Bernholz:an amazing vocalist and performer. She went quite viral for her amazing album covers drawn onto people's faces. Yes, she's an amazing makeup artist. She does amazing body painting amongst many other things. She's a multi-talent and she was kind enough to you know accept the ridiculous proposition of having to perform on a treadmill yeah with no way to see what she was doing um yeah like obviously classically like just designed the show was never going to perform and just made it really really really hard and she performed and went and took that on tour for a couple of years with um Stuart Warwick who's another amazing vocalist I don't think he's making music anymore um but so he was willing and able so I just sat back and watched it go on tour and it was really thrilling to sort of have you know maintain momentum but also try something I'd never done before it was a bit of a test I haven't done it again since but I would be up for it you know again at some point

25:46hi there it's emma here i'm gay crashing the podcast to quickly tell you about the drowned in sound newsletter every wednesday i invite myself into your inbox with permission of course to share opinion writing and resources tell you about cool things that you should be involved in within the world of music activism etc i also bring track of the week and a little bit of hopeful news for you because we all know that the news cycle can be grim at the best of times. Drowned in Sound newsletter every Wednesday in your inbox. Sign up now.

26:28Elizabeth Bernholz:So the jump to the present, I first reached out to you about chatting about the boycott of King's Place because it's one of the few recent boycotts where you can say, well, actually things changed. And you were sort of, the statement you put out was really powerful. Could you give people a little bit of context so I don't garble it? So what happened and why did you decide to stand in your power like that? Well, thank you for that. Yeah, it was, I mean, I don't take credit for the success of that. I don't take credit for it shifting things at all. I think the momentum had been growing a little bit like behind the scenes before it got to my statement.

27:11But so I was really excited. I was going to do a year's residence at King's Place and I was going to do a series of performances, including one new performance. and one way or another I caught wind of another event that the King's Place venue was hosting later in the year which would be during my residency and this was um it was built a sort of a space science or space defense conference but really when you looked at the sponsors it was like Lockheed Martin it was like it was a you know an arms based conference and space lasers Space lasers. Yeah. Yep. There they are. They are real. So, I mean, I was alerted to this and obviously like worried.

28:00And so various conversations were had about, you know, before my residence was due to begin. It was like, is this definitely happening? Like, is, you know, like, are you going to maybe look into this? Is this, you know, can we, can we, can we not do this? Is there a way out of this? so that we were putting sort of not heavy pressure but mild pressure set you know to show that you know I'm not really um up for this I'm not up for sharing the space because it would have been within the month same month as one of the performances that I was set to do there and the more I looked into it the more I was kind of really disappointed to learn that although on the surface it doesn't say explicitly but but the King's Place music program is funded by their corporate hire and And so that money is directly going back into the pocket of an artist.

28:48And I didn't like that idea. I didn't feel comfortable doing that at all. So in the end, quite late in the day, to be fair, because we just hadn't got anywhere with our, you know,

29:00Elizabeth Bernholz:trying to be civil behind the scenes. And I wanted to do it. That was an income for me that I would have liked to have. With all due respect, you're not selling out the O2. so having a residency like that is probably quite financially significant um in the scheme of a year of work you can do yeah and all the on all the work put into it leading up to that point by you know my agent my manager you know the time put into work on contracts lined up to be involved in that um it was there was going to be something that she featured in yeah it was something that like a commission that i'd already done that we were going to represent it in in a different space So I was really looking forward to having that, you know, I was just so gutted that I didn't get to do any of those things.

29:43And yeah, a whole year of scheduling that I had to just bin and then try and find things to replace it.

29:49Elizabeth Bernholz:And other opportunities that would have come through and you're like, well, I can't do that because I've got this residency. All of that. Because, you know, if you're lucky enough to be busy and working, then you know you have 12 month, sometimes, you know, 24 month schedule ahead of plan and you don't get much flexibility on that usually. so had you ever taken a stand like that on anything before because I feel like turning up to a protest and like you've even got a lyric haven't you which I did scribble down the uh I'm too tired to protest this but I'm too worried I'll regret this yeah 2016 yeah yeah um no I hadn't any done anything to that scale and obviously this is in this is in a really like a really aggressive time where there's multiple wars, there's some really, really devastating conflicts going on.

30:41And you can't really hide from this stuff. And if there's a chance to send a message through, then, you know, I'll do it. Sometimes that's not even enough for people, you know. Even me making my statement, I was very careful to just be, you know, my statement was fairly general in that I don't want money from weapons that are used to kill children going into my bank account. Sorry. um not sorry sorry not sorry like it's obvious to me and it was obvious to everybody in my team and of course it was a team decision it wasn't just I don't want to do that you know because I'm you know those people that work with me that put those things into their calendar they were depending on income from it all of those people had to lose out from it um and I know that but you know this it's a much bigger topic than than that but but yeah that was it just felt like there was no it was a no-brainer really like I'm not going to do this so what would you advise to

31:34Elizabeth Bernholz:someone who maybe finds himself in a similar situation of ethically I don't feel like this is right like it sounds like you did the initial thing of I'll speak to the organizers I'll find out exactly what it is like and then I guess you're like well I'm going to make a statement like how hard do I go on it am I actually going to pull out completely am I just going to make a statement like there's probably a few different stages from it was there anything that you sort of learned that if someone's listening to this that's thinking well actually I feel like maybe this is the time I make a stand yeah I just I just think it's instinct and gut really you have to just go on that it's sometimes not as easy as that though I mean like we've discussed you know musicians are usually not like millionaires at least not in the circles I operate in and you know you don't want to lose income you don't want to lose the relationship within it with a you know with an arts organization it's an art you know a venue that I've always respected and enjoyed going to events there and so I did I you know that was another thing it's like I don't know if I'll they'll want to work with me again now because I you know I kind of had to publicly shame them and when I say them it's like obviously there's people in that department that have to answer to a higher level of you know it's it most of them don't want this either um but that's their jobs yeah like I can't imagine it's really hard when you're in that middle ground position and so you know there were a couple of artists who were also residents that year who didn't you know they didn't pull their residencies and they did make statements but they didn't pull out and you know no shade on them at all you do what you you want to do but I just felt like because of the people involved in in my circles and in my team and and the timing of it would have been like I expected when people caught wind as they would because there was a letter going around they would be protesting outside that building come October when the event was set to happen and that would be exactly the point where I'd be walking in with my gear, you know, to do a show.

33:30And I just thought that's, you know, I don't want to be part of that and I have to make a stand so that, you know, if it helps to stop that from happening, then great.

33:42Elizabeth Bernholz:Well, I thought it was great and I instantly was like, I'm going to buy some merch and I'm going to encourage other people to. And like, I feel like so many people do sort of collectivism or like that's what they call it when you just like share something you can click on and feel like you've taken part in the protest. Guilty of that then, yeah, a lot. But I think actively like losing out on income, like you said, not just for you, but the villager people that support you. And it was a really big, brave thing. But on the flip side, I got to see you perform at the ICA, perform Black Dog. It was one of my favourite shows of last year.

34:18Elizabeth Bernholz:It was just such a special moment to see this new era of you. And I guess I got one main question. You talked about how freeing it was to be masked. How has it felt performing this record in a whole different stage of life? And kind of like, because you seem so powerful on stage. I feel like you love the theatrics of the lamps and the projections and everything about, like you're part of almost an installation, I guess. it sort of feels like as an audience member oh wow oh thank you there's not really a question how does it feel to remove the mask i guess yeah no that is that is a very clear question and i don't think i could have done it at any point until that point that i'd done it i think i'd done and i'd done you know three albums of mask fully fully masked freak um and it was time to sort of unmask but you know the freak's still there underneath i think but um i think just the content of that record didn't make sense for there to be any other layer you know I was making a record about sort of weird in between realities and sort of being haunted by one's past and going through kind of like a very forensic study of PTSD and and hauntings and like the parallels between the paranormal because I'm as you know on one side I'm very interested in all of that stuff at the same time I'm really interested in how it plays into psychological processes and physiological processes um and depression things like that so I'd made this five five years in the making thing about a very you know feeling incredibly vulnerable and feeling incredibly tormented by a lot of these subjects and it just just to wear a mask like to be anything but me did not make any sense in some ways i was still removed from me the me you see now because you know there's a there's a degree of theatricality to it um i i almost what i was doing what i hoped to do wasn't explicit necessarily but i was almost like being a medium right so like a spiritualist medium the chair you know the lamp this kind of living room setting where you'll have might have a seance and you might see it you know a medium sort of slump down and start channeling a voice and the idea was that you know I was the medium for the you know voices of my interior world and my past and you know present kind of very very present experience of anxiety depression PTSD like dealing with all of those things and it was like me sort of totally becoming incredibly vulnerable um in that setting i needed a few things to be able to be slightly removed but it was the idea was that i was embodying those those states that i'd been kind of living in for well forever but but particularly those those five years and i made so did that add to the discomfort for you almost of being on mast again no no no i i actually loved being able to just go out and be eyeballing people yeah i think in previous situations i've never had my eyes on show and they all they've seen is this mouth like grimacing at them and i love the power of threatening people i love the power of that as a you know sort of small framed woman to be able to scare men yeah is is actually wonderful feeling and that's why i was a bit i was a bit addicted to it for a few years i was like i really loved it have you ever seen farmacon play i've never seen her play i've never seen her play no but i love that intensity i saw a show at oia festival in norway it was through this big like bowers and wilkins sound system thing and i've never seen a solo artist that's so loud and so confrontational half of the performance was like microphone touching people's noses almost like screaming into the microphone right in people's faces it was so but it felt intimate in a way it didn't feel it felt both aggressive and intimate it was quite an odd experience that's it was unsettling and strange yeah i i sorry there wasn't really a question no no no i was just curious because i was like i'm curious too and i wish i don't she's still touring performing i think so yeah yeah i need to make sure i get to one of those gigs i think um i think from a performance perspective that that sort of thing becomes are really addictive when you harness the power of it and it's really simple because it's really direct and I'm not you know costumes and stuff there's plenty of you know other opinions that it's just like you know eye-rolling oh it's just gimmicky whatever but I think the meaning of it has become so so much more symbolic and strong for me over the years that then kind of removing it I don't know.

39:12It was just, I was ready basically to do it and to completely disarm, you know, from that kind of layer of protection. But who's to say that, you know, I adopt one again. It just depends what the next thing is.