Although musician Ethan Gold suffered a set back with a head injury in his early teens, that prevented him from pursuing music for several years, he didn’t let that stop him from overcoming difficult challenges, or the pursuit of his love for music. And although 2020 has been one of the most difficult and trying years yet, Ethan has released a new single titled “Our Love Is Beautiful,” reaffirming the choice and kindness of love and kindness that exists in all of us.
Along with his latest release, Ethan scored the full-length film by his brother (Ari Gold), The Song of Sway Lake, in 2018. He’s gearing up to release his double album, Earth City, “demonstrating his songwriting flexibility, renewed energy, and the breadth of his vision.” (Hip Video Promo) With the music video for “Our Love Is Beautiful,” Ethan enlisted fans from around the world to help sing his lyrics of compassion and hope, and each fan sings them one at a time, featured in their home country, and blended together seamlessly through the beauty of technology.
Your latest single and video for “Our Love Is Beautiful” is a beautiful display of hope, empathy, and kindness. Can you share your vision with this song and the music video behind it?
Ethan Gold: The song arrived, as most songs do for me, in a partial dream state. I felt I was singing to someone who didn’t feel beautiful or loved. So there was a direct human story in it for me. But the energy of the song quickly started coming in from a feeling from people all around the world who feel put-down and disconnected. Especially people who feel mocked because they still have that light of goodness inside them.
The video was a love letter back to the world. I’d had a head injury, and during my recovery, I became aware that “Our Love is Beautiful” had fans, though it was unreleased. People were singing it at weddings and uploading covers. I felt the reason the song worked for peoples’ intimate declaration of romance was really that it’s about universal love. So instead of making a video with a crew, I got one of those round-the-world tickets, and with my old phone as my only crew, had people around the world deliver the song back, in all their different energies. And I filmed streets and landscapes and blended them all together.
It’s pretty obvious that things have been way out of balance in the world for a long time, with polarization and disunity seeming to get worse and worse. Strangely, the coronavirus situation seems to be, despite its horror, also putting many people back in touch with empathy, or at least, a little bit more self-reflection. Even though many people are confined, I hope this video can remind anyone who watches about the colorful world we have, and the possibility of unity as a human race. I’ll admit that’s a big ambition for one little song and video.
You overcame a head injury to pursue your love of music. How has music helped heal you personally and professionally?
Ethan: Personally, music was essential for my emotional survival in childhood. But music was also essential for the recovery from my head injury. I was living in New York at the time, in the East Village. Busy neighborhood. I could navigate walking, but crossing streets was terrifying and confusing, and conversation was out of reach. I just couldn’t track the words fast enough. A lot of friends vaporized. I could feel a lot of former friends basically thinking ‘oh well, so much for Ethan’ and backing away over the long recovery. Didn’t want to be around it. But inside, I was still myself, my soul was intact.
And I knew that music could help my brain. Two of my main routines were going to Grace Church and listening to the organ being played – Bach especially. All those divine intertwining lines are like celestial mathematics, full of grace and also order. And the other interlocking order came from the gatherings of mostly Puerto Rican drummers in Tompkins Square Park. They also created a complex of order, but rather than the harmonic complexity and order of Bach, it was rhythmic complexity and order. Listening to both of these things, in person, for hours on end, I could feel my brain coming back to life, synapse by synapse. And not just the old pathways. A lot of new ones too.
So listening to music really can heal, and playing is even better. I started playing bass again first, and that was amazing, just lighting up my brain. Please, they’ve got to bring music education back to schools. Even if most people don’t become musicians, that’s not the point. Playing music does wonders for the human brain, and soul too.
You also scored the full-length film directed by your brother and occasional bandmate (Ari Gold), and The Song of Sway Lake. How does creating music for yourself, your audience, and for films satisfy you creatively?
Ethan: I feel I’m constantly running to catch up in the world with what’s happening in my inner musical life. I have hundreds of songs waiting for my action.
The film work is a different way music expresses itself. When I score a film, I’m there to support and enhance the vision of the director. But I’m also there to tap into the film itself as they’re working on the edit. I try to sense what the film itself wants, and bring strong thematic material that will bring a mood and unique stamp to from the opening sequence, and then slowly build resonances throughout, so the film becomes like a one-of-a-kind dream that only exists in itself.
You’re preparing to release your new album Earth City, featuring songs about important causes that you believe in and care about deeply. What is your writing and recording process like?
Ethan: Earth City is going to be a double album, which I hope to release before the end of 2020. It’s about human longing for connection, to self by passing through doubt, to others through romance and nightlife, and finally to nature.
So for me, it’s really unity itself I’m working for, more than a specific ‘cause’. I’ll admit though there is a strong ‘environmental’ theme to about a quarter of the songs.
My writing process is generally quick – I dream about half of the songs “I” write, and wake up and write them down very quickly. Sometimes, I labor over tiny details that probably aren’t that important. My recording process is much less quick, and that’s one of the reasons I’m so far behind where I wish I were in terms of songs written versus songs released. But in the future, I plan to record a lot quicker. I still tend to overthink, but miles less than I used to before the head injury. In the future, I’d like to just gather great musicians and a producer and engineer and record as much as possible live. Which means I’d play fewer instruments in the recordings, which is fine.
The music video for “Our Love Is Beautiful” features your fans from around the globe singing your words of healing and reconciliation, one at a time. How did you find the people featured in the video, and how much of your creative input went into the video?
Ethan: I directed the video. Probably if someone else had creative input, I would have been in the video more! People I worked with professionally really nagged me to include myself in the video, but the song “Our Love is Beautiful” isn’t really about me anymore, if it ever was. This is why I let other people perform it, essentially, people from around the world. And there’s one moment where you can see me in a reflection, sort of a mini joke. But I did feature my silhouette as a theme of the traveler, and a way to sort of be in the video. No doubt that idea of putting a silhouette version of myself, and using tech to show elements of the world I filmed both inside and outside the silhouette, was also influenced by my head injury; I felt like a partial ghost at the time. I was just getting functional as I came up with the idea and shot the video. I shot the majority of it on my old phone as I traveled the world during my recovery, including faces and places around our round planet. There were also fans who sent in their own footage of themselves to be included, and I was fortunate to find an incredibly kind and patient editor named Taner Tumkaya who managed my determination to include everybody who participated, which was quite a job.
Fun Questions
Who was your first concert, and do you have a favorite one?
Ethan: Depeche Mode. Despite what you hear on this song, there’s actually a lot of synth-pop in me. I may do a record like that next. I actually did a whole album of covers a few years ago, and the majority of that is new wave. Favorite concert? Ween. Those guys crush. I love that they take those brilliant funny songs and turn them into four-dimensional experiences live.
What was your first album on cassette, CD and/or vinyl?
Ethan: David Bowie, Changes One. Vinyl. I don’t sing like him, but he’s very important to me.
Which five albums and/or artists would you not want to live without?
Ethan: Well, I want to live, full stop. But David Bowie, Brian Eno, Bjork, Grace Jones, Leonard Cohen, and Elliott Smith all matter a lot to me. That’s six, for free.
Do you have a guilty music and/or entertainment pleasure?
Ethan: Despite what you hear on this track, and what I said earlier about loving new wave, I also like metal, if the lyrics aren’t gore stuff. 80s Metallica, Megadeth, and Suicidal Tendencies. And 90s on Meshuggah, Gojira, and Napalm Death. I also like Duran Duran. Somebody should do me a favor and cover “Battery” in the style of “Rio” (and note, the opposite of that would suck.) Two great 80s album lead-off tracks.
Let one of your readers take that and run with it.
What have you been listening to, reading and/or watching?
Ethan: During this pandemic, I do music stuff almost all day. Either making videos, or live-streaming, or recording, or writing. So when I’m not making music, I read spiritual books. And for real downtime, I’ve been in a 1955-1965 Euro phase, watching Bergman, Varda, Fellini, and French new wave films. I like the black and white. And more than that, I like how seriously they took the possibility their art form could take on the big questions art should take on, while still feeling like they were experimenting. Those are good principles for any art: be about something meaningful to you as a human making it, stretch into some new ideas of how to present it and try to still have the result bring pleasure. Soul, mind, and body.
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