ELLA SMOKER OF GGLUM
Just as the ceaseless and unilateral march of time moves ever forward, so is the sequence of tracks on the debut album by Ella Smoker. Also known as Gglum, the English artist takes the metaphorical approach of moving through a house, closing one door at a time as the next is opened, to explain the process of movement, cathartic release, and direction.
There is no greater example of the passage of time than starting in one place and finishing in another. This is the embodiment of The Garden Dream in so much as Smoker's current position in life is different compared to where she was some years ago.
As echoes of the past fade into glimpses of the future, the thread that stitches the continuum together is that of understanding how the twenty-one-year-old Smoker considers herself from the time she first put pen to paper as a lyrist exploring her world and expressing it through music and who she is now, many miles down the road.
The debut record has been a long time coming in a way and by virtue of that extended period of time, Smoker’s life has changed in significant ways as she explains. “I started making the album in 2022 which is quite a while ago now so it would be silly to say I haven't changed. I think writing the album was a very healing experience and allowed me to process many things that I hadn't previously which means I left the writing process a little happier and more put together than before I wrote it.” Having grown during the process, it would be impossible to remain untethered to those personal explorations but does the sentiment remain unchanged? “It definitely still feels like me but just a slightly younger version”, which is an honest if not accurate assessment given that the period from inception to completion is measured in years, not decades.
There is always a mix of introspection and external events in the wider world when it comes to creating any work and understanding where the lines between personal experiences and that of the general human condition intersect and where those lines diverge is something that Smoker describes as a world within the world. “I definitely pull from personal experiences. I realised I tend to imagine the location of a memory when I write music. So I’m really putting myself inside the memory. I mostly write from personal experience but sometimes I like to emphasise situations or talk about situations I see others going through.”
The conduit through which all transformative processes occurred in the creation and production of The Garden Dream is via Smoker’s imaginative power. To explain the overarching theme of the album and how she extrapolated the metaphorical into the literal, it was by using the notion of place to convert and convey deep thoughts and feelings into a tangible sonic state as she goes on to explain. “The feeling I wanted to give when you listen to the album is like opening a door to a series of rooms, each room being a different song. At the end of the last song I wanted it to feel like you're closing the door behind you, knowing that that world still exists, you're just not there anymore. It’s all about how your dreams are reflections of your unconscious and you're true feelings about things and how unprocessed feelings can manifest in bizarre and fantastical ways. Using stories from my dreams felt like a safe way to write about very personal things that felt a bit difficult to outwardly say.” An approach that has served Smoker well and shows insight into the methodology she employs to create her work. Shifting from the abstract to the practical, Smoker shares how she goes about crafting her songs and the ways in which she fleshes them out. “I tend to start on the nylon string guitar just feeling out chords and then it all seems to follow from there. I think it’s good to take a holistic approach so you can find what would best serve the song. The lyrics and vocals tend to be one of the later things I do. I only start writing the vocal parts when I’ve created a good base to the track.” With work in hand, it wasn’t long before friend and producer Kid Karma joined the ranks.
As Smoker explains, the working relationship with Kid Karma was an easy one as their synchronicity greatly enhanced the overall result. “Karma Kid and I have always really locked in with each other musically and that’s why I asked him to make the album with me. He’s always seemed to really understand the Gglum project and encourage me to stick to my guns. I think it surprised me how quickly it all came together. We barely made any songs that didn’t make it onto the album. It was a really magical process.” And of the musicality throughout the record, Smoker and Kid Karma already had a preconceived idea as to what would be the perfect fit for the lyrical subjects that were being addressed on The Garden Dream as Smoker elaborates. “Karma Kid and I knew before we started making the album that we wanted loads of distorted nylon string guitars, blown-out percussion a mixture of really jarring and really beautiful sounds. I wanted it to feel really raw and conflicting and rough around the edges. I think it’s a more interesting way to carry the dream themes than floaty, heavenly sounding songs.” And the expressed notion of dreaming extends beyond the sounds and into the visual realm as it was serendipity and a cultural anchor that helped provide the artwork for album as well.
Although the initial idea for the album art was not intended to be the end result, it did however as Smokers details, prove to be a happy accident. “The cover art was originally just a placeholder in the Soundcloud playlist I was building the album on. It’s a painting by my favourite artist Hugo Simberg and a lot of his art is based in Finnish folklore (my mum’s from Finland). Because it was there from the start of me making the project, it kind of got intertwined in the writing process so when the time came to find the ‘actual cover art’ nothing else seemed to fit. The art and the music sit in the same world I like to think.” The macabre and supernatural topics Simberg is famously known for, notably The Wounded Angel, is an apt artist to choose when capturing on canvas the imagined, dream world states, that he and twenty-first century Smoker both draw upon in the attempt to express ethereal ideas that are conjured up and set it a solid state.
Throughout the process of releasing her debut record and working alongside a number of different artists, musicians, and industry insiders, it was during this time that insights were gleamed that had never been at the forefront of the project but did come to light as it unfolded. At times in some small way (and other times in a major way), whereby certain incidents occurred, and words of wisdom were uttered that resonated deeply and in turn altered the way she applied herself to her craft. For Smoker, it was self-assuredness and self-awareness that bridged a gap between meek and mild and certainly and conviction. “I’m historically really bad at standing my ground and advocating for what I want to do. I don’t like to feel like I’m making things difficult for anybody. The best advice I got was “be a dick”. Not in the way of ‘be horrible to people’ but in the way that if pushing my creative vision makes me feel guilty then I just need to get comfortable with that feeling in that situation. Standing up for yourself doesn’t make you nasty unless you do it in a nasty way.”
Coming full circle and on a little more of a philosophical note, it is what music gives Smoker that nothing else does that really counts and is evident when she says, “It gives me a space to really work through feelings without that trouble spilling into my real life. It’s a moment in time where you can indulge all that self-pity or joy or embarrassment or anger to the full extent and then leave it behind. That goes for writing music and listening to it. I think it’s important to let yourself really feel things sometimes.” And nothing else could be asked for from music when it provides an outlet, comfort, a channel, and a unique expression.
