Here's a special in-depth interview with one and only Salem Anhedonia aka E_DEATH / Edith Underground. Her music and visuals should be familiar to anyone reading this blog, I've been championing her creative outputs for many years now, and it makes me happy to see her grow as an artist and keep gaining new fans. Enjoy the read, and make sure to follow her on Bandcamp where you can also buy her music, as well as on Youtube where she posts here videos and vlogs.
Mutant Zones: I discovered you in 2017, shortly after you released your debut mixtape “Teen Witch” as Spirit Bored. Was that your first proper release, or did you make any other albums or demos before that?
E_Death: ‘Teen Witch’ was my first official mixtape. I had a few Spirit Bored albums up before that. They were very bare bones dark synth rave tracks, some of them didn’t even have drums. They were more like compilation projects of everything I was making as I was first learning how to produce. I started the project in high school, shortly after my dad had passed away. He was a DIY electronic musician in his (minimal) spare time in between his factory job. I got into music because it was the only way I felt like I could connect to him again after he died. Using his old equipment and stumbling to make music was a portal into the afterlife. A virtual ouija board of sounds that I could speak to him through.I love that metaphor! Do you know if he released anything? Did you manage to preserve some of his recordings?
He never released anything “properly”. This was like the early-mid ‘00s so most of it was bootleg CD-R releases. I had them all saved but lost them after our garage flooded. Somewhere in my mom’s attic is a laptop with an old iTunes library full of uncategorized music he made. I would love to get my hands on them and release them into the world someday. From what I remember it was a lot of techno/trance/deconstructed kinda stuff. He also made a fake snuff film with my mom and their friends. That is also lost to time, sadly.“Teen Witch” blew my mind with its fuck you attitude, raw emotions and variety of electronic genres you were mashing up together. It was very DIY, daring and fun, everything that the mainstream witch house scene was not at that time. Looking back at that mixtape, what/who inspired you at the time, and what did the process of recording it look like?
I’ve always been inspired by films and video games. I sampled the Friday the 13th NES soundtrack, horror movies I grew up on and little soundbites from pieces of media that I loved on that project. With music, my inspirations at the time were the more grittier, punchier witch house acts and internet pop girlies. Gvcci Hvcci, Charli XCX, VOODOO CRYSTALS, $WAGGOT and †V∆ND∆L.The recording process started in my garage at my childhood home in Chicago and ended in Tallahassee. It was all recorded on Garageband on a 2007 MacBook Pro I bought for $80 from a pawn shop. Mainly using the built-in speaker to record vocal takes when people weren’t home. I had no understanding of mixing or production at all. I just wanted to make something that felt like all the things I loved gave birth to some deranged feral child.
In the time it took to make that project, I graduated high school, got kicked out of my mom’s place and ran away to live with my internet friend in Florida. Through all that I just had this vision for a mixtape that was going to really set the foundation for me. Something I could always look back on and be proud of. I used to cringe listening to it but there’s something charming about it now. I feel like it’s still a part of who I am now.
It was the title that originally made me download “Teen Witch”. Not sure if you know Teen Witch, the DJ/remix producer/visual artist and Tumblr queer icon? I thought your album was a witchy sonic tribute to him haha
I definitely remember them from the glory days of Tumblr. I was only a teenager during a lot of that so it was a very influential time for me. So much of my time was spent just absorbing internet aesthetics and deep-diving into artists who none of my friends at school cared much about. I think what really inspired the name was that it was just who I was at the time. I was just some teenager who was practicing witchcraft in her bedroom with endless internet access. It was also an homage to projects like “Super Ultra by Charli XCX”. I loved the sound of the name, Teen Witch. It had a bite. It resonated with me. It also is the name of a terribly great 80s film that I think everyone should watch.There was another internet artist who reached out to me during the making of it and they said something along the lines of, “you know, a lot of people have used that name…it will be something that you need to live up to”. And that really struck a chord with me. I felt like I had a lot to prove. I feel like everyone struggles to really prove their worth on their first proper release.
What was the reception to that mixtape? If I recall correctly there was a Twitter stan account for Spirit Bored, right?
To my surprise, a lot of people really connected with it. I still get asked about it to this day and I think that says a lot about it. It was just the sixth year anniversary of the project. There was definitely a small cult following that I have done a terrible job at maintaining over the years. Just kidding, I love the little weirdos out there who follow what I do. It’s a beautiful thing to create art that means something to someone. It’s a sacred bond that I don’t want to ever sabotage or take for granted. And yes, there was a Spirit Bored fan account but they were cyber bullies who made fun of me for having green hair and 2012 Grimes’ bangs. S/O to the haters, hehehe.
Sometime after that you rebranded to Internet GF. What made you change to that name?
Anyone who has followed my project knows that I LOVE to change my artist name. I promise, E_DEATH is the hill I’m dying on this time. No more artist name changes. But, Internet GF happened while I was sorta e-dating another witch house artist. I made a Spotify playlist with that name and during a manic episode I had the idea to just change my entire musical identity. Spirit Bored felt sorta gimmicky (hahah because Internet GF definitely isn’t just as bad…) so I wanted to start something that felt more aligned with the “serious” direction I was going to take. I also was really embarrassed of my earlier work and wanted to distance myself from it. Every time I changed my artist name it was more of a conceptual era. I still consider Teen Witch an E_DEATH release. It’s all in the same universe. Everything is connected and I take no offence if anyone has everything under one name in their iTunes library lol.Who is Spirit Circle, who co-produced a few of your tracks?
Spirit Circle is my dear friend Charlie. They’re an incredible artist who has been doing this as long as I have. They’ve gone by multiple artist aliases since. Their most recent project ZLUTZ, is an incredible thrashy witch rave act that combines ethereal sound design with harsh noisey realms. They were my first internet friend who made music in the same way I did. We were both just kids who grew up inspired by the same sounds and chased the same dream. We met on Twitter in 2015 and ran an online music collective together called CYBER HAUS. To this day, they are one of the few artists I’ve really collaborated with. It’s hard to connect and work with people online. Not everyone has the same vision and not everyone is in this for the right reasons. I’ve always just done this for the sake of expressing myself and creating a world to escape into. I will always be grateful for artist peers who just understand things in this life that others don’t. It makes this journey a lot less lonely.Around the time of Internet GF rebrand, you also released a noisy punk single with your friend Cea under the A.M.A.B. banner. How did that come together? Did you manage to perform any of those songs live?
A.M.A.B. (All Men Are Bastards) was formed in my living room on a Tuesday after a shift at Forever 21. We were bored of the local music scene and I wanted to do something separate from Internet GF. I was heavily in my riot grrrl phase and listening to a shit ton of Babes in Toyland. Cea played bass and I did vocals. There were like 2-3 more songs for that project that never got recorded. We played a handful of shows but they actually banned us from playing in Tallahassee after we got the cops called on a house show for being too loud. That was our last show and that night I tattooed AMAB on my thigh with a needle and some india ink I stole from the mall on my lunch break.You also did some work on Tallahassee-based hardcore-punk band Protocol's EP "Bloodsport". How did that collab happen?
I was involved in the DIY punk/hardcore scene in Florida for a bit. I really just wanted to experience an IRL music community and that was all we really had there. I had a lot of fun, learned a lot about different types of music. I was friends with Protocol when they did the project, so they just asked me if I had any ambient synth tracks they could sample for the release. The tracks they sampled were actually pieces I composed in High School. It’s really sick knowing that something I made when I had no understanding of music composition was resampled for a project that has kept a cult following over the years.Maybe you mentioned it somewhere on your socials, but where does the Edith in Edith Underground come from?
Edith Underground is a very on the nose reference to the 2001 film August Underground. When I was thinking about transitioning Internet GF into her next birth cycle I wanted to do something that was more visually based. Heavily inspired by snuff films, VHS fuzz and distorted analog violence, I felt like it was only fitting. Edith came from the name of a distant family member of mine and the constant sighting of graves with her name plastered on them in different cemeteries I would hang around. It was a vision I kept having. I always thought of Edith as a martyr for the lore I was building. She was this version of me that had been neglected and abandoned. A sister of mine that I ate in the womb and threw up in my early 20s. I had sleep paralysis when I tried to astral project in my teens and I saw her then. Long black hair, blunt bangs and dressed like she had just came up from the ground beneath her.I love the fact that the arrival of Edith Underground finally brought us some merch! You’ve admitted it before, and probably anyone who follows your IG streams knows that you’re a huge VHS fan, so the fact that you decided to release your visual mixtapes in that format should be no surprise. How are you sourcing tapes for projects like that?
Any information on VHS stuff is heavily gatekept online. An internet friend of mine really helped me with shooting on tape and the early struggles of recording footage back to my laptop so I could edit things digitally. After that, I spent a few years really learning everything I could about the technology. Mostly how to preserve, archive, clean and repair tapes. Sourcing them is extremely easy and affordable. Most people think you need to buy overpriced blank tapes but you can literally just record over any VHS tapes you have. There’s an anti-piracy seal that you can cover (with stickers or Scotch tape) on every VHS tape. Once that is covered you can record anything you want to over that.Whenever I do a tape release, I source Disney clamshells from thrift stores and record over them. It gives my tapes a beautiful crunch. The process is difficult in some ways though. While I do save money by using $0.25-$1 tapes, I have to take apart each tape and hand splice the reels so they end exactly when I want them to. If I didn’t have the patience for it I probably wouldn’t do it. But I could spend my entire life locked in a room with tape reels and vhs fuzz glowing on the tv screen.
How big is your VHS collection at the moment, and what are some of your fav tapes that you own?
My tape obsession began as a kid. I used to save my lunch money and buy vhs tapes from the Salvation Army across the street from my mom’s house. I probably only have about five hundred tapes. My dad collected a lot of 70s-80s horror movies on VHS too so I was blessed to inherit a lot of his collection after he passed.My favorite tapes I own:
Video Treasure’s release of Sleepaway Camp (1983)
When Black Birds Fly (Jimmy Screamerclauz, 2015)
Murder Death Koreatown (2020) - Rare ‘Found Footage’ unreleased cut of the film
Actual found footage tapes I’ve picked up from abandoned houses, cabins, alleys, etc. Mostly home footage of family’s I’ve never met. Sometimes I pretend they’re my own family and fall asleep to strangers opening up presents on Christmas morning.
Speaking of visuals, you’re also a prolific videomaker, and your recent visuals include collabs with Friendzone. How did you connect?
Twitter, I reached out as a fan and then we started talking about music and life and then got really close over the past few months. Honestly working with Friendzone made me gain more confidence. Dylan sees a lot in me that I didn’t see in myself til recently. He’s been like a huge mentor for me, which I’ve never had with music.When shooting "Neighborhood Watch", did you get any comments from passersby when walking the streets covered in blood? That video is iconic!
I shot “Neighborhood Watch” with my sister Vareons. We did that a month after “The Flesh of Fallen Angels” and both were shot at the height of the pandemic. Chicago was the emptiest I had ever seen so I knew I needed to take advantage of that. We had a $0 budget and a bunch of Spirit Halloween blood I shoplifted. There’s b-roll footage of a car driving up on us during the shot where I’m outside of the church soaked in blood. They’re about to hit a stop sign but after seeing us they immediately hit the gas and speed away as fast as they can. I don’t know how we didn’t get the cops called on us. Most of that was shot at like 4-5am. Something like that could not really happen now that the world has opened back up.You’re really good at mood building, listening to the cinematic and ominous soundscapes on “Born From A Wish”, “The Return Of Lady Maria” or even the titular track from the “Heaven's Night” album makes me wonder, will we ever hear a full length ambient album from you?
I really really really love ambient music. There’s so much texture to it. My infatuation for it will only grow as my tinnitus worsens with age, so I honestly see a future where I am producing entire projects of ambient realms. I would love to do a sort of boneless witch house album. Ethereal saw synths, distorted vocal samples, rumbly bass and tons of heavenly pads. No drums though.That sounds beautiful, looking forward to it. Are there any other genres you’d like to have a go at?
I feel like I’m going to sound sooo annoying with this answer…but I’m going to end up trying to interpret any genre I love into my music at some point. I think there’s a lot of places my sound can go in this life. I would not be surprised if someday I just dropped a melodic and suuuper dreamy midwest emo album and then followed it up with a very nightcore heavy deep house album.What are some recent albums you’ve been into lately?
I have a hard time listening to full albums because I think I have like undiagnosed ADHD or something. BUT, some artists that I’ve been really into lately are: Earlee Grave, WITCHGOD, Umbra Abra, Beth Sawlts, Dog, Gartex, 8485 and Stay Healthy.What are your plans for the future?
World domination. Filmmaking, video games, writing books, fashion design, making a shit ton of music. To never stop creating and never stop expanding the creative world in my brain. I don’t see myself ever stopping but that’s mostly because I don’t think I’ll ever peak as an artist. At least not till I die. In terms of music, I’m always working on music with my brother Vivid. We’ve got our band, Love Hurts, along with the solo project of his that I’ve been producing for. Gods Wisdom and I are working on a very special collaborative project as well. I’ve been producing for other artists and getting out of my comfort zone. 2024 is going to be a lot more of that. No boundaries with creating. No walls. Working on so much stuff that I don’t have time to even think about real life. That’s the goal.Any shout-outs?
GetGo coffee, Delta 8 peach ring gummies and all my besties <3As a bonus, I've asked Salem to list some of her fav things, because who doesn't like lists? Enjoy
E_DEATH's favourites:Albums:
FRIENDZONE - Collection I
CRIM3S - Stay Ugly
Yung Lean - Unknown Memory
Movies:
Climax (2018)
Halloween (2007)
Christiane F (1981)
Books:
AFX8CCD by Nicholas Rall
Down the Drain by Julia Fox
Visions by Troy James Weaver
Games:
Spyro: Year of the Dragon
Silent Hill 3
Max Payne
Places:
Wisconsin (entire state is dreamy midwest wasteland)
Tunnels and sewers under Chicago