In this blog post, I will talk about things that have inspired me in the past few months. I am mostly making this post to look back and remember what has been influencing my work in music, film, and writing lately. This list might be rambly and quite um, random. But I always have multiple things in my brain soup.

I have been making a lot of music to sort through for my newest album tentatively called “Weird Machine”. this has been distracting me from the things I try to do weekly. My dream is to one day have more money to invest in music. For this album, inspirations have come from several places. The first is from my normal musical idols which include, Aphex Twin, Einstürzende Neubauten, The Knife (and Fever Ray), Trent Reznor, Forest Swords, and Der Blutharsch. These are not the only musical acts that inspire me, there are many many more but I would say these are the main ones. But I’ve been listening to more indie acts recently. One of the mixes on YouTube I’ve been listening to a lot is a video collection made by EELF.

EELF Playlist I’m fond of.

It’s all different musicians as far as I can tell. I find myself listening to a lot of breakcore and 90s - early 2000s techno and jungle music, everything from Aqua to Meat Beat Manifesto. I've also been listening to some Hip Hop and experimental music and sounds from various points of the 20th century. These works vary from having a classical sound, being just straight noise, or having almost a funk sound to them. I have been sampling sounds from my house and outdoors. I keep trying to write a sweet cute song for a special sample but I cannot do it. I really want to write cute pop music but everything, every musical or noise thing I do turns out dark or just like cluttered noise. If you want to hear a recent work, I made a video for the opening intro track to the new album up on my music YouTube. I’ll link it below.

My new video :3

Another musical and general muse I have really been into lately is Ethel Cain. I have been following her work for a few years now since she called herself White Silas. I really just think that Hayden is really great I have read nearly every interview she has done and I follow her work quite closely. I don’t listen to her music obsessively, because honestly it is really emotional to listen to and sometimes I cannot really handle it. But I don’t think that is a bad thing. Her work is quite powerful to me, and even though it is not something I put on to cheer up, (although I do bop out to her more “pop” songs like Crush) I do listen to it to relax sometimes and I have been listening to it while I clean. I think that Preacher’s Daughter is a masterpiece.

I admire the atmospheres that Cain creates. I also like the videos she makes and the visualizers as well. I have read about her process of making music and becoming processed by the character of Ethel Cain. In some areas of my life, I do similar things when creating. I have been building a world in which my music album takes place so I understand what Cain means in a way. I also have always been a fan of American Gothic and conceptual music (although Cain’s concepts never completely overtake her craft). I feel a real connection to the people Cain sings about; and obviously, if you have read any of my poetry books, you will be aware that religion is a theme I like to use and talk about. I really do love Cain so much.

The next thing I have been really loving and inspired by is vintage tech, especially the late nineties to the 2010s tech. But I also like very old tech as well. The aesthetics or even the actual function is what I am interested in. I want to buy a vintage computer like the image below. ( Or the Flower Power Mac which I will put a video of below the image.)

I don’t only like Macs but they are probably my favorite. In my personal life, I use both PCs and Macs. I actually use a vintage Mac laptop for some of my music, but I want to get more vintage computers once I have my art room back again and have more space. (Long story, but at the moment I don’t have my art room available.)I think I will be able to find some of those creamy beige PC’s for cheap. I also like vintage clocks, watches, cameras, and even like lamps and stuff. I plan to make a little lair with my room after it’s available again! I already use vintage cameras a lot, but I would like to invest in a vintage handheld camcorder. I have also been playing around with some vintage software. One of the vintage software I have been playing with a lot is Toshiba’s LaLaVoice2001. It is a voice program that can speak, read emails, and even sing and make music. I’m still messing with it and trying to get it to sing as well as speak.

Along with my interest in vintage computing, I have been diving into the online gaming, or massive LAN parties of the turn of the century and earlier part of this century. I would love to do this with a group of friends. I love photos of these massive events. I try to take in the energy that I imagine these events had surged through them. I also have been listening to Bass Hunter quite a bit and I think that also has been coloring my mood.

I have such nostalgia for the early internet and older video games. I have been playing some PS1-style video games, and it has really been a lot of fun. But also I’m into some vintage games that all seem to be horror, which is funny because I am actually kind of a scaredy cat! But I love vintage horror games, also the music in them is amazing, and my second album OtherPlace is inspired by some of these games. I love so many cool vintage-themed games coming out. I am currently looking for a way to play the old games Bust-a-Groove 1 and 2.

Currently, I am concerned about the fate of the Internet Archive, which has been sued. I really hope they don’t take it all down I find so many things there and so much of my work has been aided by the archive. I am working as fast as I can to personally archive things from the archive in case it all disappears. If it does get torn down, so much knowledge is going to be lost and that really bums me out.

I briefly had a new LiveJournal recently, which was a collection of old websites I had found in my travels around the internet. But it got taken down for some vague reason. So I’ve been thinking of starting a second blog here that does the same.

The aesthetic of Y2k and the early to late 2000s is very close to my heart right now. The blobby amorphic shapes, the pale blues and whites, and the silver coloring, the impossible minimal sterile environments. All of it is very alluring. I love the vision of the future that is presented through these aesthetics. The architecture, the consoles, the fashion, and even the electronic music is all hitting me the right way. I think part of this is nostalgia for a time when I was very young, but also there is something clean and calm about the aesthetic.

I am also really into the art of Marcel Deneuve and others like them. I like the extreme detail and the crowded city spaces. I also have been into older anime that has a similar vibe to this, like Armitage III and Akira. I also like Cyberpunk art that includes organic and natural things mixed in with the hyper-tech.

While I love the cleanliness of the Y2K aesthetic and the sometimes positive visions of the far future, my other inspiration also comes from abandoned or ruined things. I love abandoned buildings or towns, rotting midwestern wilderness, old amusement parks, and atmospheric places that look like they are hiding secrets. Mist, fog, light rain, grey or dreary days. The Russian film Stalker is a perfect example of that mood. I still watch videos about urban exploration and as I said in my previous post, I really hope one day I can travel to abandoned places again.

All of this kind of is coming together to build the world that my newest music album takes place in. But it is also inspiring the Sci-fi book of short stories I’m writing.

There is a feeling I’ve been having that there is definitely a secret world all around us, and these places are linked even if they are far distances from each other. Some of these places are sort of like liminal spaces, and others seem ordinary but I feel like, a vibration from them. It seems to me that these places will make it through the end of the world, which I don’t think is upon us, but will happen one day. Many of these places seem to be in Japan or Russia but they exist everywhere, even in the United States. It’s like being able to see into a future world.

Vintage anime has been very inspirational in not only my music but also my writing and art. I have been watching a lot of older anime that I kind of ignored before. I am hoping to make more videos about older media. And then there is Lain, always Lain. Lain is ever present in my mind.

I have been mixing all this together and more to make the current vibe I’m living in. I am getting new glasses in the next week or two so I will be able to read again. My eyes were so bad and squirmy that recently I started having trouble reading and even working on the computer. My eyes have apparently completely changed in the past two years. So I plan on reading more Sci-fi stories and playing a bit more with some things on the computer. I’ll do a second post about things inspiring me probably soon. Because there is more of course, these are just the main things I could think of today. If you want to see my Tumblr which kind of has a lot of things in these areas on it, there is a link on this webpage to it.

I hope you are all doing well!

-Aisling.