An exclusive interview talking about latest release, “The Cinema” and PAREIDOLA EP
Erin LeCount is made for everyone who creates, wishes they were creating, and everyone who gets a little funny feeling when they go into a theater and thinks of what they might have done or said or sang or written while spending their time there instead. The twenty-three year old is easily one of the most compelling rising voices in the alternative pop scene. Her instincts for her craft are wide open and raw as a producer, singer-songwriter and creative “girl’s girl”.
Today, she releases her latest EP, PAREIDOLA; and all of which were produced by her and her alone in her little garden shed at home (watch a breakdown of how she put it all together here). The newest feature from the release includes highly anticipated single, “The Cinema.” It breaks down the thought process behind whenever a creative comes across something they wish they themselves created, but someone beat them to it.
The full EP continues through an entire story of a downward spiral: all from the first point in falling down a rabbit hole to falling victim to one’s self-destructive tendencies. In PAREIDOLA, we see the full fruition of the narrator’s tendencies to perceive connections to an unrelated matter as they descend into a state of madness and paranoia.
We had a chance to chat with Erin. Keep reading below to find out what we chatted about!
So I told myself if I ever got to have a chat with you I’d ask you where you got your angel wings or if you made them yourself, because I’m obsessed!
I wish I could trace their lineage properly. They’re from Russia originally and actually belonged to an artist I already knew, but we never made the connection that my set designer had bought them from her, it was a weird fateful coincidence. I played one of my first gigs with her in this little vintage store.
She reached out when she saw the wings on social media. I was never meant to keep them, it was just for cover art, but I left the shoot, was about to get on a flight a couple days later, the wings were meant to be sold to someone else and I felt this separation anxiety and called my manager and told her I needed to spend two hundred quid on a pair of wings and sent her on a wild hunt to go pick them up. I had no other money in my bank account at the time. Best two hundred pounds I ever spent.
What’s a reason you chose to use them in your visuals?
The wings were never even meant to be in the shoot. Originally it was meant to be two big drapes of fabric that kind of resembled wings. The name of the EP was I Am Digital, I Am Divine with lots of lyrical references to religion and God, feeling out of body, feeling out of place and “wrong”. They’re beautiful but they’re awkward and striking and alarming and they represented a pressure and burden – I was hunched over in each image, on the floor with these wings around me like a shield and a defense mechanism, like they’re weighing down on me.
Angels are meant to be these graceful, all-loving messengers, and here I am singing about wanting revenge in the song “Godspeed,” resentment in “Silver Spoon,” all these “wrong” feelings with the weight of trying to be “good” and pure quite literally on my back.
As a master storyteller and worldbuilder in many aspects; I gotta know any books or movies (maybe fantasy ones specifically if that fits) that changed your brain chemistry growing up and still stick with you?
I wrote a lot of stories and scripts, I really wanted to be an author. I read a lot. It was all Enid Blyton when I was younger – Mallory Towers and The Magic Faraway Tree… The Chronicles of Narnia, just classic imaginative books. I wrote to Jacqueline Wilson and Michael Morpurgo incessantly.
With film, I was really a Studio Ghibli girl from young because of how beautiful and tender it was, without being too overwhelming. I’d get so intensely emotional every time I watched a film, it would really affect me for days and weeks at a time. I loved Arietty, I had a Totoro backpack from ComicCon.
I wish I had better deep cuts to give you but I didn’t watch loads of films growing up – I went to the cinema to see The Grinch, was sick and passed out because I was so overwhelmed once so we stopped going. Used to get deeply distressed at animated chickens too, I think it’s an uncanny valley thing. I love Coraline.
I love the little lowkey fantasy elements you hide under a synth pop scope; what’s one element that you’ve been obsessed with putting in your productions lately?
Bird noises. Every song I make will have some bird noises. Some are from my garden because I record my vocals in my garden shed!
What’s a songwriting session look like for you as someone who’s a little of everything in the studio?
Figuring that one out currently. There’s a new process forming. It looks like openness to fucking around, being willing to make a mess, to jump between synths and capture happy accidents, it looks like trusting instinct way more and not shutting ideas down before they have a chance to live. I have written and produced almost everything on my own in my garden shed, because being in rooms with other people felt intrusive and I feared not having creative control.
But these last few months, I’ve found one or two people who co-create with me in a really special way. You get presented the opportunities to be in a room with people who have created your favourite music ever and you realise there’s a moment that it could be good to come out of isolation. It’s been exciting and inspiring and challenging.
What first inspired you to make music, and how has that vision changed today, if at all?
I think I have always been quite sensitive and just had intense emotions that I needed to express in quite melodramatic ways, to feel understood. Some might call it attention seeking which I don’t think is a bad thing. When I was young, writing stories naturally turned into songs. My first ever song I remember was called “Strife” and a lot of it was about world peace. I fell in love with performing, but for a long time I was down every local venue and bar singing whatever cover song the audience wanted to hear from me, and that was not my deeply personal innermost thoughts. Writing was for me, performing was to please others.
I feel like wasn’t until lockdown when I opened up Garageband and realised the only person listening was me, and I started writing things I was proud of, more evolved than just long poetry style entries, but songs with intention and something to say about what I felt, what I sounded like, what I would say if nobody heard it. I am inspired by how big the small parts of life can feel.
On your Spotify profile, you describe yourself as an “eternal work in progress.” Could you explain why/how you came to this conclusion, and how it ties into your music journey?
I think I’m just really eager and excited by the idea of improving and growing and learning and how much there is out there still to do, songs to make, artists to discover, skills to learn, shows to put on and visions to come to life. There is always an inevitable gap between your taste, ambition, dreams, inspirations versus your skill level, current circumstance and time and energy constraints, but I’m inspired by that gap these days I think, because it requires creative solutions.
I have so much I want to do and that used to feel intimidating – like there’s always going to be more books to read and art to make and you’ll never complete it all. But actually that just means you just have to keep capturing where you are right now at this moment in time and I want to spend the rest of my life continuing to do that.
Where do you find your existence in the midst of apathetic feelings, and in the middle of a world that tries to give you all the answers?
Making things. Like the active process of making a song when you’re in total flow state is euphoric to me and the ultimate feeling of being present, like you’re tuned into something and tuned out of the noise. If I’ve been feeling apathetic or disillusioned, that process makes me feel clear, it makes me feel like I have a purpose again.
I get a similar feeling when I’m on a walk. I get a similar feeling when I see my oldest friends Ruthie, Daisy and Izzy and we start talking about something and it somehow spins this web of conversation that goes on for hours without ever stopping, even if we’re just talking shit. Sometimes I get it when I’m peeling vegetables for dinner and you get a rhythm and it becomes easy and natural. All of this is flow state!
Every part of your productions add to those big feelings you capture: what’s some advice you’d give to someone who’s maybe done things to make themselves fit into a box, and how would you encourage them to truly embrace themselves and their feelings?
I’m still learning. I think we should all stop worrying about being “authentic” or “inauthentic” – I think we get some say in deciding who we are and who we’re going to be and accept that we might outgrow it or change our minds and that’s okay too.
I think if you had passions or hobbies as a child you should go find a class that teaches adults that thing. I think you should have a good hobby.
I think you should learn to hear constructive criticism without letting it give you that sick feeling in your stomach and learn that everyone’s opinions, including our own, are clouded by our own projections and insecurities and experiences and you can decide if the opinion is information you want to take in or not.
I think you should get really good at saying “no” and then get really good to the times you feel most like yourself and what you’re doing, wearing, where you are and who you’re with in those moments.
I think people pleasing and trying to make yourself smaller is disrespectful to yourself and to all the people who actually want to love and know you, and that if you’re trying to please someone who doesn’t want to love and know you that is a waste of a life, they will never be content with any version of yourself you present, but you can be.
How do you like to translate your unique productions and atmosphere into a live setting? Any techniques or instruments you like bringing along with you?
I love my Prophet synth, it’s the first piece of hardware I got. I love a heavy intense bass that people feel in their bodies. I love a massive reverbed out vocal.
Your audience has a really deep connection to your music. You mentioned on socials that even before the song was out and while you’ve played live gigs, people knew every word. How does something like that feel?
I just feel overwhelmingly grateful really. Not every artist gets a crowd like that. I feel very lucky that I have people that feel equally passionate about this music as I do, and that we get the opportunity to be in rooms together sharing that experience. They’re the ones writing out and guessing the lyrics from leaks on Soundcloud so they can be front row and shout every line, they’re passionate and they’re proud of it, I think that’s cool.
For those who are also waiting – any big tour dates coming up we can catch you at? New music? What’s next?
A short and sweet festival season. A lot of travelling. Some shows in new places. A lot lot lot of music to make.
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