glumroll on Rediscovery and Her Complex Relationship with “Boston”
Image courtesy of Hwang Seon Im
Written by Daphne Bryant
It’s hard feeling like an alien in any space, and genre-bending artist glumroll is no stranger to the sensation. She was born in South Korea but has lived internationally her whole life, never feeling tied to a certain group or place. For the past three years glumroll has been living, studying and making music in Boston, a city she had a serious love and hate relationship with for quite some time.
When she first arrived in Boston, glumroll experienced massive culture shock.“ It was my first time in America, and I was also living alone for the first time, and meeting different people for the first time, and not all of them are the most welcoming,” says glumroll. She introduces this topic in her first single“ UFO”, released in 2023. It can be seen as a bit of a cry for help, the lyrics and music both highlighting the loneliness and isolation she felt at the time. However, her newest single“ Boston”, set to come out this August, is an older, newer perspective.“ I’m talking about how I hate Boston, but I have so much attachment to it now, and it’s sort of what challenged me to grow and be who I am now.” This new single is a love letter to Boston, but it’s a very honest one. Devoid of romanticization and full of heart,“ Boston” is a must-listen for anyone who’s ever felt out of place in this city.
So how did it all start? When did glumroll start making music? The roots of her sound stem from psychedelic and progressive rock; in middle school bands like Pink Floyd, The Smashing Pumpkins and Nirvana were extremely influential for the artist, but her style has definitely evolved over the years.“ I really like sound design, glitches, and experimenting. I’m sort of experimenting with myself,” says glumroll, citing the 60s and 90s as her current favorite genres to blend and play with. A lot of this change the artist attributes to Berklee College of Music and the fellow creatives she’s met at school.
Image courtesy of Zo Saldana
“ Before I started studying music, I was just one of those active listeners. I didn’t really know what it’s like to create music, but then I started taking it more seriously and it became my passion,” glumroll explains. Now the artist is way more involved and invested in the production process, always thinking about how she wants to layer sounds, attack parallel recording or approach mixing. In tapping into all aspects of her artistry, glumroll has gained important perspectives that only enhance her music.“ I have that artist mindset, but I also have the producer and mixing engineer mindset, and I have the everyday listener mindset. So it’s like I have these three mindsets that I just sort of [oscillate] between.”
For glumroll, creating a song is a different process every time, but there is one thing she tries not to do everytime she goes into a session, and that’s force herself to create.“ [I’ve learned to] take the pressure off of me so I’m not going into a session thinking I have to write a good song tonight, and then that’s the goal. I feel like what’s most important is being able to connect with the people in the room and with myself.” glumroll finds that her favorite and most successful sessions happen when she’s able to get in tune with how she’s feeling, without carrying the expectation that a complete project will come out of it.
Musically glumroll has a very unique way of thinking about song making.“ I like thinking of the song as something that flows and is [always] in motion,” says the artist. Maybe it starts slow and then gets really fast, includes different time signatures or has interesting dynamics, but whatever the song does you can trust that it’s being done in a“ glumroll-kind-of-way.” Sticking true to her identity and self-worth is a new venture for glumroll, but one that she is taking head-on and working on every day.“ People see me and they’re like ‘ Oh, she does punk rock, she has a very hard or strong aesthetic’, but they just see that. They don’t listen to my music, they haven’t had actual conversations with me.”
Image courtesy of Hwang Seon Im
In the past, glumroll would internalize people’s outer perceptions of her and her music, thinking she had to embody it or keep it up in order for others to like her. Eventually she realized that sort of aesthetic is not what she’s going for, or what resonates with her. Meeting others digitally and building community online has helped glumroll uncover and rediscover what her brand is in many ways; the artist even points to our zine as inspiration.“ You meet all these creative people [online]. That’s sort of how I met [Daphne, the founder of Dreamworldgirl Zine]. She has her own zine brand and it really resonated with me. I was on my phone and I saw this Y2K theme and so many girls, and it connected to this inner me, this nostalgic side of me.” Everyone should strive to embrace their truest self, without fear or judgement from outsiders.
If there’s one thing glumroll would tell a new listener of her music, it would be to live in your own world for a bit. Music is a healing process, and it extends far beyond the artist and can reach the yearning ears of anyone, anywhere.
