Green-House (Interview)
Good morning.
Today we’re listening to Green-House, an electronic music composer based in Los Angeles. We previously featured them back in May 2021. The throughline across Green-House’s music is a spirit of affirmation toward living things, to us a callback to Japanese environmental music. On Green-House’s new album, A Host for All Kinds of Life, the project’s creator, Olive Ardizoni, officially welcomes collaborator and artist Michael Flanagan into the act.1 Host features Green-House’s signature soft synths, sometimes repeating like lazy rain, other times arpeggiated into shimmering spectra. We’re also re-upping their debut record, Six Songs for Invisible Gardens, which was released very early in 2020. An interview with them follows the streaming links.
A Host for All Kinds of Life - Green-House (40m, spoken vocals end of track 9)
Spotify / Apple Music / YouTube Music / Amazon Music / Bandcamp / Tidal
Six Songs for Invisible Gardens - Green-House (30m, no vocals)
Spotify / Apple Music / YouTube Music / Amazon Music / Bandcamp / Tidal
In January 2020 you put out Six Songs for Invisible Gardens which was a guiding light to so many of us during lockdowns. What inspired you to make that first record?
I was having a hard time after moving to LA and I was working jobs that left me feeling depleted. I started going for walks every day to make myself feel better. On those walks I started to tune in to the plants around me. At the same time I started listening to Japanese environmental music. Those two things shifted the way I was seeing the world and it inspired me to write music around it.
What are your favorite records to work to?
Giorgio Moroder: from here to eternity
Numero group’s lounge and easy listening playlist
Tears for fears: songs from the big chair
Aphex twin: various
How do you trace golden oldies and motown music as influences on the music you make?
It’s just the first music I started engaging with as a child. The oldies station on local radio. I suppose it influenced me to make music. It just wasn’t conscious at the time. Just pure enjoyment. I still listen to a lot of this. I guess now when I hear a lot of the old Motown greats it feels untouchable. It inspires a lot of positive emotions but I could never dream of making music that good. It’s not approachable in that way. Unless you are a master at your craft.
Name an underrated musician from the past 50 years who deserves more recognition
Nobody in particular but just women in general. Women in electronic music especially.
Where do you find new music today?
YouTube is the best I think
Any good LA restaurant discoveries of late?
The lazy acres grocery store that opened down the street from me.
Have you noticed that there's more popular interest in ambient music in recent years? If so, why do you think that is?
So I haven’t been in the ambient world for a long time. This project was my first time engaging with it but I don’t consider it ambient past the first EP. I also don’t listen to a lot of that genre. If it’s true that it’s become more popular, I would say some of the reasons are as follows:
It’s accessible to make. All you need is a computer and you can be a solo artist. It’s expensive to have bands and practice spaces now.
Its less than structured nature also makes it more accessible to people who lean more towards “artist” than “musician”. Ambient can be more of a sound art genre.
And lastly, it might have to do with a collective desire to ease stress and ground into our physical bodies amongst all the chaos of today’s world.
Loving the recs for music to listen to while working!