Bjork, SOPHIE & Jockstrap: alt pop riser Erin LeCount walks Wonderland through the music she had On Repeat whilst making her new EP.

Endoscopic, atmospheric and wholly immersive, Erin LeCount’s sophomore EP “I Am Digital, I Am Divine” is a stunning step up. The singer-songwriter and producer has been leaving a mark on the UK alt pop space across the past few years, and with this new body of work takes her authenticity to seamless heights. 

Pitched somewhere between Caroline Polachek and Fiona Apple with a potent soulful core and cutting-edge digital lens, the four-pronged EP deftly and fluidly portrays LeCount’s emotionality, and sounds like a forecast of the ever-progressive pop landscape. Delving into the influences behind the work, Erin Le Count is Wonderland’s latest On Repeat entry. 

Listen to the EP…

Erin LeCount’s On Repeat…

Sampha – “Plastic 100°”

One of my favourite all time songs. I wouldn’t produce the music I do if it wasn’t for this album, but especially this song. The strings, the plucks, the liminal space, the electronic hi hats going round your head, the big roomy snare and organic percussion. I follow it to every different corner it takes me. I’m in space, I’m underwater, I’m up close. I find something new to love in it every time I listen. Song of a lifetime I think.

Sega Bodega – “Um Um”

Any song with a bed of vocals is something I love. It’s the foundation I built Marble Arch and Godspeed on in particular. It’s so full of grief and light, the vocals are repetitive in a way that’s hypnotic to me and kind of stops me in my tracks when I listen. Feels like breathing, feels like sewing – these threads of vocals going between everything. The children-like choir at the end is something that will always get me. Sega Bodega’s production is painfully good. It’s an homage to the legendary SOPHIE, another one of my favourite all time artists whose death touched me as a fan hugely. 

SBTRKT x Sampha – “Hold On” 

Classic. When I’m overthinking a song in its production or lyrics, this song reminds me what a song can be – simple yet intricate. It’s so clean, it’s so impactful because every sound is so intentional. It’s intuitive. It feels like mindfulness, it feels so universal. Those xylophone / glockenspiel keys in this were a subconscious inspiration for Godspeed I think. The pace of the entire thing probably influenced “Godspeed” really. I wouldn’t have ever dared used this song as a reference because I love it so much but I think parts of it bleed through.

Bjork – “All Is Full Of Love” 

Another all time favourite. Songs like “Sweet Fruit” were meditative to write – originally just built on these ambient synths drones and vocoder beds that gave me all this space to just let my voice and lyrics kind of flood out. The songs I made got built up over time and furnished with drums and structures but when I listen to this song it feels like permission to take my time. Like they could’ve existed in their original forms. A lot of the time I feel like I’m making birdsongs, because I just warble all these long voice cracks and guttural screams that eventually turn into words, and I feel conscious that I’m being too loud or jarring or nonsensical but when I listen to Bjork‘s voice I’m reminded that using your voice like that has purpose.

SOPHIE – “Is It Cold In The Water” 

I’m so undeniably inspired by electronic music. SOPHIE is such a key figure I remember falling in love with. It truly does feel like cold water in my ears, cold icy flurries. Those harsh metallic textures and classic industrial SOPHIE noises make me really emotional for some reason. The “Marble Arch” drum snares are metal sword noises combined with SOPHIE samples. The synths, the arpeggios dance and feel like something crystallising to me which is a sound I’m so drawn to. Those kind of arps live inside pretty much every song I do.

 Florence and The Machine – “Light Of Love”

An artist that has soundtracked so much of my life. My love of big ceremonial tom drums (evident in “Marble Arch” & “Sweet Fruit”) is definitely partly due to Florence. Whenever I feel like maybe I’m giving too much drama I’m reminded of how much I love that drama in Florence’s work – the theatre of it all. This song feels very tied to “I Am Digital, I Am Divine” the opening track and “Marble Arch”, in the sense that it feels like an open wound – these lyrics about feeling so sensitive and overwhelmed by the world that you just want to look away and get fucked up and switch everything off, but releasing you have to just keep feeling and alchemising it over and over, turning it into art or something else. The choir in this as well is beautiful. I love a choir. 

Bon Iver – “715 CREEKS”

The most bare song. The antithesis of what I make in a way, which can be quite a lot of sound at once. An entire song of just vocoder (sometimes I get these little phantom feelings I can hear a drone or something vaguely musical faintly in the background). “Sweet Fruit” began as this vocoder heavy outpouring inspired by this song. I saw it live with someone I was in a relationship with and I couldn’t stop thinking of it when I was making the EP. A special song.

Haley Heynderickx – “Show You A Body”

Heavenly song. The magic things she can do with a piano, a guitar and a voice make me feel unwell. I love highs and lows in a song, I love being consistently surprised, I love not knowing where I’m going next and every time I feel it can’t get more gutting, it does. Violent lyrics with delicate delivery. Repeated simple lyrics with violent delivery that keep hitting you over and over til you listen. I want to do that.

Lorde – “Hard Feelings / Loveless”

Melodrama is one of my favourite albums. It so clearly highlighted this space for alternative pop world (that I’d like to live in) that sits left field of mainstream charts but has impact on everything around it. I love a wonky song structure. I love the SOPHIE-esque industrial screeches. I love the anti-chord. I love how she writes about domestic things with such romance. “I light all the candles, cut flowers for all my rooms. I care for myself the way I used to care about you” still makes me stop. Only a nineteen year old could’ve written this album – that lens of life is so distinct.

Jockstrap – “Concrete Over Water”

My most listened to song a few years in a row. It fascinates me. A completely journey of a song. Like whiplash and a masterclass in production. Whenever I listen I try to picture and imagine how it was created, and how the idea for it was born. The huge choirs, the war drums, the synths, the drop downs to an organ and voice, it’s very digital and very divine. Everything I want this EP to be, in one completely ridiculous song.