gglum: The Freshest New Talent To Come Out Of London

Photo by Finnegan Travers

In the heart of London's iconic music scene, ‘gglum’ stands as a burgeoning artist, leaving an indelible mark on the industry with her compelling sound. In our exclusive interview, she sheds light on the roots of her lyrical inspiration and the evolution of her sound. 

Delving into her creative process, 'gglum' unveils how her personal experiences seamlessly blend with universally relatable melodies. Her candid approach to our interview offers a peek behind the curtain at what makes the indelible artist so popular. Sliding into easy conversation, Ella as she is known to her loved ones, tells me about her propensity for late mornings and her new-found challenge to be an early riser. Only then did we pivot to the hot topic of her career…

Pleaser: I guess I would just love to know whether you have always wanted to be an artist?

gglum: I think I always did want to be an artist but I didn't see it as an actual option, like a conceivable thing that could happen. But I wanted to do something to do with music so I thought ‘maybe I'll just go work at a label’...I just wanted to be around music. So when it actually started working as being an artist it was quite surprising to me that it was actually something people could do.

You probably had to work really hard to get that off the ground; I feel like people don’t appreciate how hard it is to create a music career…

G: Yeah I mean, I started really trying to get into it; gigging and music and playing stuff when I was 14 or something…it was a lot of trial and error.

Who are your music influences at the moment?

G: Always The Microphones, forever The Microphones…always the biggest inspiration and the thing that sort of flipped a switch in my head, of how I wanted to do music. Also at the moment, I was just saying earlier I have been listening to Nine Inch Nails a lot…I don’t know if I would say they are an influence but it just seeps in in other ways doesn’t it…and Alex G as well, I love Alex G.

I listened to your new song and I love it, and it’s a little bit different from your earlier stuff: how has your sound developed with your latest work?

G: I think everything I have written before SPLAT!, Up until that point was just me kind of finding my footing and kind of experimenting while also releasing it so it’s kind of pretty cool to watch what the progression was…I feel like the new stuff is me kind of really settling in to what I want to be doing and going more in the direction of what i've always wanted to sound like, but actually just like having the confidence and knowledge to be able to do it.

That must be so exciting

G: Yeah I love it and it makes releasing music a bit more exciting as well, and more nerve wracking.

Are you going to lean into this sound a little bit more or develop further from this?

G: A bit of both, there is always space to keep doing what you know how to and also experimenting a bit. Recently I've been trying to do quite wild for me, kind of, exercise myself with stuff I normally wouldn’t usually do, really trying to make sounds I wouldn’t usually and I think it’s really great to do that as well because it means you can discover things and ways you can develop your noise you hadn’t thought of before. 

Your mind must be always thinking then…

G: Yeah, but it's great…I kind of like to keep it for when I'm actually sitting down, writing music so it’s then, I've got, like a bunch of backlog of stories and stuff that I can just chuck in. 

That’s a healthy balance, most people don’t have that, it’s actually really nice to hear

G: …yeah a bit of compartmentalisation

I would love to know what a favourite past-time is. What is a good week for you?

G: It’s funny because music was always my hobby, so now that it’s what I do, I don't actually have that many hobbies (laughs) I like hanging out with my friends, going to the pub (that’s a classic isn’t it?)

I’ll take it, as long as you tell me what your order is.

G: Oooohhhhh that is good. I like a lager, for a long time I was quite into Neck Oil, but you can overdo that…and if you’re hungover, I've discovered recently a gin and tonic…magical.

If your past time is spending time with friends and heading to the pub; how do you take inspiration from those parts of your life?

G: I think, It’s almost like, someone put it really well once, they said that my music is like a teenager’s diary, even though I'm not a teenager anymore, it’s like my interactions with people and places I go…a lot of the time when I write music I'm thinking of locations, I don't know how to explain it, like I’m thinking of a place and that what I'm writing it about…or something that happened in a place. I think I take a lot of inspiration from the friends I'm hanging out with and what they say ends up trickling into songs and the places I have been are in a lot of the songs…that sounds really confusing (laughs).

It's almost like synesthesia, but for places?

G: (laughs) that’s a rubbish synesthesia.

As the interview comes to a close, Ella shares her day ahead and I feel as though we would be excellent friends in another life (if I lived in London, was a few years younger and, most importantly, a lot cooler). SPLAT! encapsulates the complicated atmosphere of love and heartache in an electronic-punk-pop-acoustic sound that distinguishes her from her peers. If you’re not listening to gglum, what are you waiting for?