Non-Musical Media That Inspired the newest GLITCHLETTE EP

Hello again my friends!
It’s been a smidge over a month since I released my most recent and exhaustingly titled EP: EVERY RAT WANTS TO CRAWL IN YOUR MOUTH AND CLEAN YOUR TEETH

In celebration I wanted to share a little more about the art that inspired it. This is an incomplete list, but I thought I’d cover the more overt homages that exist in the EVERY RAT world.

Mandy (2018) dir. Panos Cosmatos

And by proxy, Nicolas Cage

What can I even say about this movie, other than I watched it like 15 times while writing the EP. The colors, the soundtrack, the RAGE!

I’m a massive Nicolas Cage fan. I just can’t get enough of the guy. I think it’s the almost dada-eqsue nature of his performances.

There’s a common thread between his characteristic overemotive bombast and the way I approach music. He takes emotion to its extreme, adding a tangible physicality to what we reflexively internalize. That’s one of the reasons I love Mandy. I’m pretty sure Cosmatos told Cage “just do whatever you want,” because his performance in this film is some of his best and some of his Cage-iest.

That’s not even to mention the score by Johan Johannsson (RIP) or just the raw visuals themselves. Every shot is hypersaturated, blown out, and lush. It’s over two hours of beautifully technicolor shots with a deeply unsettling thread throughout.

Mandy is easily one of my favorite movies of all time. I can’t actually speak to the quality of the story, but with a movie like this it doesn’t really matter. You just have to see it.

Suspiria (1977) dir. Dario Argento

What can I say about this movie that hasn’t already been said? It’s an absolute classic. The aforementioned Mandy most certainly pulled a lot of stylistic inspiration from this film.

If you’re a cinephle nerd like me I suggest reading about the production techniques of this movie that they used directly on the film itself to get the colors as vivid as Argento wanted. The score, by the band Goblin, is great even as a standalone album.

This movie and (almost more so) its branding, inspired the visual aspects of this era (with some added Lynchian spice). For example, the typeface used on the SIDEPIECE HYMNAL and FESTER single covers are both..I’ll say…heavily inspired by the Suspiria font seen in the above poster (and most of the movie’s original branding/covers).

House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski

For those not in the know, its difficult to say what this book’s about. In short: its about a house that is bigger on the inside. Many describe it as a story within a story, which is accurate, but a crucial aspect I don’t see talked about enough is how well it functions as a satire on academia. Parts of the book are written as if they’re “non-fiction,” complete with citations and footnotes. Some of the citations are famously completely fake, which as whacky as it sounds, is acknowledged by one of the characters in the story. You really just gotta read it.

The first time I read HoL was early 2017. My then-partner and I had just moved into a new place after a house fire, and this book was one of a few left behind by the previous tenants. I picked it up on a whim one day and it changed my life. It rewired my brain. It was a singular reading experience I will never have again and I will die mourning that experience. Anyways.

Back then, I’d never heard of it, and if you know anything about this book, you’d know that finding it in your old, kind-of-creepy house is a perfect (albeit uncanny) way to read it for the first time.

Fast forward a couple years and I find myself reading it again, only this time, I’d just started new (and as I’d later discover: uneffective) bipolar medication. The new chemical cocktail, combined with the psychologically disorienting nature of the story, sent me into a manic episode. At the end of it, I wound up with SIDEPIECE HYMNAL!

SIDEPIECE HYMNAL: An Origin Story

There is a specific Emily Dickinson poem that is quoted in HoL:

There is a pain — so utter —
It swallows substance up —
Then covers the Abyss with Trance —
So Memory can step
Around — across — upon it —
As one within a Swoon —
Goes safely — where an open eye —
Would drop Him — Bone by Bone

You might recognize the third and fourth lines…

Cover the abyss
With a trance of madness
So my careful heart
Can manage
A safe way around it

The first verse from SIDEPIECE HYMNAL is a loving reimagining of those lines. I saw it as the gothic answer to the idea of looking at someone you love through rose-colored glasses. The feeling of falling for someone you know will hurt you and the delusion you must maintain to pursue the relationship in spite of it.

This book also inspired the lyrics of WRAITH SPACE. The beginning features a spoken word part that is inspired/pulled from an archaic translation of the Aenid that is quoted in HoL. I’ve never been able to find it online, so its possible its one of HoL’s many “fake” quotes.

I think this book’s resistance to traditional form subconciously inspired the structure of the songs on Every Rat. The book has multiple break-neck vibe shifts in the way its written that I ended up channeling on this project. Or it was my ADHD. Perhaps a bit of both?

Anyways, if you haven’t read it, I strongly reccommend to do it at least once in your life, there really isn’t anything else like it.

Well there you have it! An incomplete list of Every Rat’s muses. Have you seen Mandy, and/or Suspiria? Have you read House of Leaves? Tell me what you think in my new Discord server.