Geertruida >> Releases >> Elmo Aoyama

Taking inspiration musically from the likes of The Knife, Dirty Three, Yann Tiersen, YMO, Miharu Koshi and Yosui Inoue, debut EP 'Spells' was self-recorded at Elmo's Blue Mountains home back in 2017, where she had no internet, no phone service, a waterfall down the road and west facing windows backing onto bush. Elmo printed off a limited run of home-made CDs and took them to Japan where she played a run of shows, selling out the CDs and abandoning the project for a few years before resurfacing the tracks for a full release in 2020.

The songs that make up 'Spells' reflect on events significant and insignificant to Aoyama, exploring themes of love, life, death, loss and politics.

"When people are in transit they’re in their own vacuum. They think about where they came from, where they’re going, what they did and what they’ll do next. If it’s a familiar route fragments of memory are stored along the way which is triggered when you reach that same spot. Passing a corner or glancing up at a street sign might remind you of who you were with or what the weather was like last time. Spells is a collection of songs written during transit through automatic writing. Each song represents a time already passed which will never be revisited again. The songs include both significant and insignificant events, fleeting thoughts and feelings which deal with themes of life, death, loss and political comment." Elmo says of the EP.