Emma Ruth Rundle made a conscious choice to reach towards making a hopeful record for the follow up to 2021's Engine of Hell. Where outside forces tempted her to turn inwards, towards isolation and hopelessness, she instead reached outwards to create a record that acknowledges pain, but offers both community and resilience in response. Although These Killing Times possesses a spirit of defiance, it retains the tenderness and vulnerability that saw her earlier work resonate with so many listeners. These Killing Times is electrifying, emotional, and charged with feminine rage; it is a reactive anthology, bristling, full of life and full of resistance - forged by and for community. It asks many questions - of the roles we play as individuals, or as artists - and closes with this one: what will we live for beyond the valley of the shadow of the fear of all men? A question with no definitive answer as yet, but one that is being asked with increasing urgency - here on this record, and beyond.
Cinder Well is the musical project of Los Angeles–based songwriter, composer, and multi-instrumentalist Amelia Baker. Cinder Well’s new album, A Blooming Body, was recorded at Hen House Studios in Venice Beach, California by Harlan Steinberger, to be released on July 17th.