Where does your musical inspiration derive from?
Too many places at once I’m sure! Were I to be hyperbolic I might describe us as groovy electronic post-rock folk with ambient twiddlings and the occasional emotional breakdown. I’d be proud of that description.

I’m from London, but I spent quite a lot of time in Devon as a child soaking up the incredible acoustic scene. Seth Lakemen, Bellowhead and Newton Faulkner were all important folk or folk-adjacent influences that became entangled in my mind with the antsy, restless rock, highly-strung indie and forward-thinking electronic music that was absolutely overflowing in London. I was pretty young when acts like James Blake, Everything Everything and Enter Shikari were fusing organic and synthetic instrumentation in uniquely personal ways and I found the intersections of styles to be the most interesting places. When combined well, I think the unwavering precision of programmed elements heightens the uniqueness and charm of real recordings.

How did you first begin writing as a group?
Oscar and I met as working session musicians and his energy and enthusiasm were completely infectious. I have a theory that some of the best collaborators and session players are so good partially because they are empathetic and receptive to what others try to express. This is absolutely true of him! Oscar is open-minded about all music, like I hope I am, but he seems to come from some kind of cosmic funk and soul dimension to which I am just a visitor. He would make anyone sound good, even me.

What is it about your relationship that brings out the best in each other?
Well, he used to have a really nice tambourine - Rambo the Tambo - but that gave up the ghost when the drumskin broke shortly after Glasto. Probably because he sometimes had to hit the cymbals with it. He also doesn’t snore when we have to share festival tents. I can’t imagine what he sees in me but he says he likes my hair.

Being musicians we’re both prone to neuroticism, naturally, but hopefully our individual neuroses cancel each other out. If not, and we’re stumbling blindly towards mutual destruction, then at least it’s wickedly fun. He spent his actual birthday practicing with me and to make up for it I got him a drum kit cake… complete with a little edible icing rendering of himself! He was delicious. Huge thanks to my lovely neighbour Diane for making that happen! Evidence of this is recorded for all time and space on our Instagram, which you should definitely follow.

From your early days of creating, how have you shaped and nuanced your musicality and songwriting?
I’ve always found satisfaction in being creatively restless. You never know what’s going to come for experimenting with new guitar tunings or futzing around with a new piece of production software downloaded from niche audio forum, but it always leads somewhere unexpected. I always end up feeling like a kid again by pursuing these little adventures! I started really trying to write songs when I was about twelve so I’ve had plenty of time to misguidedly explore rock, punk, folk and electronic music, but my (admittedly lofty) ambition quickly became to try and mix and match bits and pieces of all of these into my own anomalous hybrid. h. eldritch is the result. Or attempt?

I studied ‘Commercial Music’ once I left school and I absolutely found my tribe of like-minded creatives, playing in various bands and projects including a seven-piece folk rock band with the gentleman who would go on to mix the latest h. eldritch tunes, the super-talented Silas Blackburn.

At that time I was very much leaning into percussive guitar playing in the spirit of Newton Faulkner and Jon Gomm, but even as the instrumentation began to integrate more electronic elements, I still performed entirely on my own surrounded by guitars, some parts of a drum kit, a vocoder and a sample pad which I would trigger at various points. It was at this time I met the awesome Tim Morris who would co-produce the first EP ‘Trouble Enough Will Find Us’. It was huge for me as he was one of Enter Shikari’s main studio and live engineers at the time and now mixes their FOH sound, as well as being multi-talented in all sorts of other ways too. I’m lucky to have incredible friends.

What is it about intimate, folk-leaning music that connects you?
It may be cliché, but Oscar and I both deeply care about hearing human vulnerability in music, though this comes in so many different forms. It can be the living, breathing groove of a New Orleans funk track, the warping and twisting of a found sound vocal sample in a house track and of course it’s found in the finest folk recordings too. It’s the ever present element of risk and mistakes that makes it exhilarating. There’s nothing to hide behind. It’s also in the creakiness, the rustiness and the dustiness of it all: folk music has room for ghosts to rattle around in, and if any song were to have a spell woven into it, it would be an old forgotten folk ballad.

How you define your essence as a band?
Harmless, pleasant gentlemen making pretty-sounding, somewhat verbose folky pop music with occasional weird chords, surprise grunge jumpscares or laser-blasts of fuzzed-out synthesiser!

You played Glastonbury this year! How was that experience?
Surreal, barmy, exhausting and incomparable. We played four sets at our first Glasto ever this year and I wouldn’t do a thing differently, even if my mind and body will never fully recover. Myself and mumma eldritch (no way she was going to miss it) arrived on Wednesday afternoon and the second we pulled in I got a call from my old friend Braden Fletcher inviting me up to the Strummerville stage for a secret set. Playing Strummerville has been a dream of mine for years and an unannounced set feels like to coolest way to do it! We left the tents in the car and hiked all the way across the site, guitars in our trolley, to get there just in time. It was unspeakably hot and sweaty but the set was fantastic fun because the gorgeous, tucked away clearing was absolutely packed. Everyone had just arrived that day and probably had the most energy of the entire weekend! I remember that somehow a impromptu hoedown was involved. We got totally lost on the way back but there are worse places to aimlessly wander! Does all this mean I unofficially opened the Strummerville stage this year? Well, it says it right here in your publication…

Oscar arrived like an adventuring hero at about 3 a.m. the next morning, coming straight from another gig. After spending Thursday in a sunburnt haze, on Friday we played on the beautiful and unique Small World Solar Stage in the green Futures Field: a stunning and tranquil hidden haven. We felt such a far cry away from the noise of the Pyramid Stage, which is lucky because we later found out that our set clashed with Foo Fighters and apparently they’re quite loud.

The biggest thanks of all go to Scotty Rockstar, Rebecca, and Noah and Alisa from the Worker’s Beer Company for actually bringing us down to the festival to play on the Bread and Roses Stage. We took part in their months-long weekly showcase competition at their namesake music venue in Clapham and being selected to perform at Glastonbury has meant the world to us. We do everything ourselves with no team around us other than friends and family so it’s the faith of our supporters, friends and fans that keeps our world turning. The whole team took amazing care of us on the campsite and on stage, and both our sets, sandwiched between headline Pyramid Stage slots on the Saturday and Sunday, are indelible memories. We will do all we can to come back every year from now on, though to have received so much support on our very first time there is what we are most grateful for.

I’ve seen them a bunch of times before, but I was still gutted to have missed Young Fathers. I did have my mind blown by Fever Ray’s set on the Park Stage though. That may have been my highlight as an audience member.

Your latest single “Amateur Anthropology” is really impressive, talk us through the making of that tune?
Thank you! I try to stumble upon inspiration for a song's theme or message by searching for a sonic element that feels distinctive and evocative. For ‘Amateur Anthropology’ that was the stuttery, glitchy synth stack that punctuates the loudest sections. For production nerds, it’s a big stack of lo-fi string samples sent through a granulator, a secret stutter plugin which shall remain nameless, finally re-amped through my old Vox AC30. I like to include production elements like this that feel familiar yet somehow warped and distorted, existing in a sort of audible ‘uncanny valley’. I like to think it might cause a listener to lean in and listen more closely.

Currently I record and perform all the instrumental and vocal parts myself, apart from drums and percussion which Oscar plays. I practically record as I write, which I am very fortunate to be able to do from my own studio space. It’s ramshackle at times but it’s uniquely mine and it’s home. It’s really important to me that the sense of that space is imbued in the tracks as that’s where it all starts as if the view from a hidden camera is embedded within the recording itself.

I am a serial tinkerer. Lots of songwriters talk about writing 40 songs for an album before cutting it down to ten, but I sometimes feel like I write 20 versions of a song before cutting it down to three and then sticking them all together. I want to leave lots for a listener to unpack if they are inclined to do so.

What are the main concepts you touch upon on the track?
Amazing question. Lyrically I wanted to amuse myself by writing an intentionally unromantic love song. Spoiler warning from here onwards: “Amateur Anthropology” is effectively the soliloquy of an unlucky lover stuck in the middle of a dysfunctional relationship, speaking in unintentional punchlines.

Two lines inspired the rest of the song:

“I wouldn’t say we’re star-crossed but my, my… she often crosses my mind”

and

“I wouldn’t say she broke my heart but she kissed me once and told me I was nice”

The other lyrics are a selection of vignettes from failed romantic interactions, relayed from the point of view of an unreliable narrator who refuses to engage with how much it hurts them. I don’t want to reveal too much, but other lyrics and the title itself are references to the modern condition of purposefully creating emotional distance in a relationship as a means of self-defence. Plus there might be a line about somebody I knew possibly being a bit too into astrology and tarot.

The most important lines are: “It’s nothing to me… just Amateur Anthropology” and “Not in love, not me”. Would you believe that if someone tried so hard to convince you of it?

What’s to come from you this year?
So much! We’ve just played our first show as a trio with the great subsonic scientist James Hill joining us on bass guitar, double bass and some gorgeous backing vocal parts. We had a headline show at the Bedford Balham (on my mum’s birthday no less) and he absolutely smashed it! Our next big trio show is on the 13th October back at The Bread and Roses in Clapham. Predict the unpredictable and expect the unexpected. It’s free entry too. We’ll also be playing an acoustic warm-up show on the 4th October at Skehan’s in Lewisham for the birthday of the aforementioned Scotty Rockstar and we may be planning something particularly spooky for Halloween, the happiest time of all the year.

Most of all, I’m thrilled to announce our next single: Innocent Sinner. It’s about learning when to embrace a little more delicious darkness in life and love, for the good never know just how good it could be… Follow us on Spotify (h. eldritch) to hear that when it’s released and find us on TikTok and Instagram at @h.eldritch. Promotion is a cheesy but necessary evil I’m afraid! Thank you for enduring it.

Why do you make music?
I just hoped one day to be interviewed by Wonderland Magazine. Plus I can’t dance, I have to do something!

If music is to sincerely move and affect people, I reckon it has to be created with sincerity too. I just try to make music that I want to exist, about subject matters that I find important, in the hope that it will reach others who’ve been longing for the exact same thing. So thank you for your attention dear reader, and thank you Wonderland for having me.