Lost And Sound

Green-House

• Paul Hanford • Episode 197

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Everything is political, even nature. That spark leads us into a wide-ranging conversation with Green-House—Olive Ardizoni and Michael Flanagan—whose new album Hinterlands on Ghostly International proves that quiet, spacious music can still carry teeth. We trace the project’s beginnings in LA: Olive escaping a soulless service job by walking Griffith Park, Michael offering early tech scaffolding, and the two slowly dissolving roles until the songs breathed on their own. Think Japanese environmental music and library records as wayfinders; sampled and real guitars treated like synths; textures that breathe, 


We dig into labels. “Ambient” doesn’t fit sonically, but its non-hierarchical ethos does. “New Age” is another story: we talk wellness capitalism, spiritual packaging, and the lazy use of eastern signifiers, especially glaring in LA where cultish histories still hum under the surface. From there, we examine the streaming economy that rewards backgroundability, how algorithms sell artists their own data back, and why Green-House resist being flattened into spa-core.


Green-House on Instagram:

Hinterlands is released on Ghostly International on March 20th

Green-House on Bandcamp:

https://green-house.bandcamp.com/album/hinterlands

https://www.instagram.com/green_house1976/?hl=en


Huge thanks to Audio-Technica – makers of beautifully engineered audio gear and sponsors of Lost and Sound. Check them out here: Audio-Technica

My book Coming To Berlin is a journey through the city’s creative underground, and is available via Velocity Press

Follow Lost and Sound on Substack

You can also follow me on Instagram at @paulhanford for behind-the-scenes bits, guest updates, and whatever else is bubbling up.

Berlin Cold Open: Everything Is Political

Paul

Hey, so I'm speaking to you from a street corner in Berlin where the Berlin ale Festival has just finished yesterday, and I just gotta say, Vim Vendors is wrong. VimVendors is so fucking wrong, everything is political, even nature. And my guests on Lost and Sound today, Green-House, go into why that is, amongst many other things. Hello! Yes, it's Lost and Sound, the show that goes deep with artists shaping music and culture from the underground up. But before we get going, Lost and Sound is sponsored by Audio Technica. For over 60 years, this family-run company has been making the kind of gear that helps artists, DJs and listeners alike really hear the detail. Headphones, microphones, turntables and cartridges, studio quality, beautifully engineered and designed and built on the belief that great sound should be for everyone. So wherever you are in the world, head on over to Audiotechnica.com to check out all of their range of stuff. Okay, let's do the show. I'm an author, broadcaster, and a lecturer, and each week on the show I have a conversation with an artist who works outside the box about music, creativity, and about how they're navigating life through their art. So whether you're new here or you've been listening for a while, hello, how are you doing? Green-House are on the show today. They are the LA-based Olive Ardizoni, and Michael Flanagan, and over a succession of releases, they've been making this music that isn't quite ambient but does play with space, is largely instrumental and beatless. I think there's a sort of exotica to some of what they do, but it doesn't come across as kitsch in any way. They also name check library music as an influence or some kind of connection with that in the conversation that we have. So yeah, they make this kind of really spaced, spatially aware, mostly instrumental, mostly beatless music that draws on nature and the human condition. And I think what they're really great at doing is letting the music really breathe. Maybe that's one of the ways it manages to avoid like Exotica, which which I think a lot of the sounds and textures and arrangements could so easily fall into. Their third LP, Hinterlands, is out very shortly on the rather magnificent Ghostly International label, and it manages to do all of this really well. In some ways, I think their music reminds me of Ezra Feinberg's music, uh, who was a guest on the show about a year ago, and his incredible album Soft Power. Now, yes, I'm often a little bit wary of doing double header interviews. I think there's a danger that the conversation can get a little bit stilted, a little bit back and forth, but I was really happy with how this turned out. It was really lovely chatting with them. Super engaged, super interesting people. And we talk about ambient music, like issues around like things like ambient playlists, like the playlistification, if that's a word of genres like ambient. We talk about like the problematic nature of new age music, which is particularly relevant considering the pair are based in LA, and you'll hear more about why that is in the conversation. Um, and like things like nature and the way they draw influence from nature and film. There's a strong political anchor to all of this, which you will pick up on for sure. So, yes. Anyway, before I get going, um, as you all know, if you listen for over the last bunch of weeks, I've recently restarted my Substack. I didn't actually do an article yesterday, just really, really, really over overworked at the moment. But the attempt is to try and do a piece every week to accompany the episode. Who knows? Once this episode's out, I might be able to do one this week for that. So I'm not really selling the idea of subscribing to my um Substack that well, but there you go. It's uh lodstensound.substack.com. Go over, give it a subscribe. Anyway, so this is me talking with Olive and Michael from Greenhouse. We had this chat on February the 23rd, 2026, and this is what happened when I met Greenhouse. Olive and Michael, welcome. How are you both doing? Where are you?

Olive

Hi, thanks for having us. We're both in LA right now.

Paul

And then this is where you live, and this is I can see like a little bit of what looks like your studio behind you. Is this where you record everything?

Michael

Yeah, so this is my like little apartment studio. It's like a one-bedroom apartment that I've like turned into a recording studio, like move the bed into the living room and then just turn the bedroom into what's important, I guess, is having like a nice little recording space.

Paul

Yeah. And I I just I think I just saw a cat in the background there.

Michael

Yeah, she's gonna be coming around. I try to keep her out, but she's insistent.

Paul

Yeah. Do you ever see that Instagram site about uh cats playing synthesizers in space? I think it's called.

Michael

Oh, yeah, definitely. Yeah, yeah. And she's a big fan of like stepping on the keys, especially like when you're playing. Like if you put your hands on the keys, she thinks like you're tapping for her attention. So it's like a constant battle, really.

Olive

She's perfect.

Paul

Yeah, yeah. Do you uh have there ever been bits that you've used that she's done?

Olive

I've done that.

Michael

That's a good question. I've I've definitely like recorded her purring and like tried to use it in some way, but I don't think it ever made it on anything.

Olive

Yeah, you did do that.

Paul

Yeah, yeah, because I uh me and my partner have a cat too, and and we noticed that he's always I think it's like he likes to try and what we believe, we might be wrong in this, but we believe that he tries to just copy what we do in his own way, like he wants to be part of stuff. Is that do you think that's similar with yours?

Michael

Oh yeah, yeah. She definitely wants to be doing whatever I'm doing in particular. Um yeah, just like won't won't leave me alone, but it it's wonderful.

Paul

So Olive, greenhouse began as a solo project for you. Um would you like to explain that a little bit then?

Olive

Yeah, so um I kinda started Greenhouse somewhat on my own, but very much with Michael's help. Um, it was kind of just a a hobby project during a a rough time in my life where I just like really hated my job. And I started listening to Japanese environmental music from the 80s and 90s, and I was really inspired by that. And I was like, I want to try and make something. Like I was also listening to Plantagia and I don't know, different stuff. So I was like, I want to try and make something um not great with Ableton, not great with technology in general. And at the time with piano, I only kind of knew like major chords. So Michael, um, I just started doing it. Um, and then Michael would jump in and be like, hey, like here's a different scale, you know, or like here's how to do this thing in Ableton. So he kind of helped me, but it was just kind of like my project and my vision, and yeah, it wasn't really meant to be a thing that like had longevity to it. So when I ended up me meeting Matthew at Leaving Records, and somebody introduced me to him as um, This is Olive, they make music for plants, which loosely um he was interested. He listened to it. I had already just self-released it on these platforms, and I didn't expect anybody to ever listen to it. And he was like, Hey, you want to take that down and have me release it? And I was like, Okay. So yeah, it just kind of went in that direction where it just like I at that point still thought it would maybe just be this like EP that was gonna be released, and Michael wasn't really that interested in being credited with his work on it. So yeah, and then after that it was just like, yeah, it's we're a duo. So we've always been a duo, but it's just yeah, it's confusing.

Paul

Right. So it sort of feels like a very organic process, how it kind of came about and formed. You you mentioned a little bit then about like you weren't enjoying your job at the time. Um I was wondering what kind of gap or needs that the music was sort of fulfilling for you initially.

Emotion, Process, And Partnership Dynamics

Olive

Yeah, I mean, my job at the time was a restaurant in Hollywood that um served the rich. Right. It was very like, and it was a nighttime job and it was very like soulless, like like Hollywood proper in LA is a dark kind of vibe. And then so is celebrity and fame and and money is just so dark, and I'm just not cut out to be around it. Um, so the antithesis of that environment for me is you know, talking to trees and hiking and being in the sunshine and listening to music that kind of supports that. So calming music with nature sounds.

Paul

Right. Yeah, I I could I could imagine. Um, I mean, I've I've had like uh catering experience, experience, and and you you know, you I think it definitely I I feel that basically it should be like uh like a law that everyone has to spend a year working in a restaurant or a bar just to or cafe just to sort of teach people a little bit of manners, really, and understand yeah, understand when manners are called for as well. And I I imagine in that situation there was a lot of perhaps like anger that would, you know, you you had to kind of process definitely, yeah.

Olive

I mean you have people like wealthy people wealthy people will toy with you intentionally too, which is just like they like to do psychological warfare on on the help, you know. It's interesting. Yeah, they'll say things like, I'll give you all the money that I have in my pocket right now because I like you, and then they pull out two dollars, you know, like that, oh I haven't been in the bank.

Paul

Actually a scene from succession, isn't it? That kind of behavior, yeah.

Olive

Yeah, it's it's it's real, definitely. Yeah, so I was losing my mind and then just listening to that music, like you know, like Hiroshi Yoshimura and that sort of thing, and going on walks during the day in Griffith Park, the park that's near us, which is an amazing park that like really, really helped me a lot.

Paul

Yeah. I mean, so am I right in thinking you're you were a couple before the project came together? Yeah, and and so Michael, when you so you you were there from the beginning, but you were kind of more like sort of assisting and and you know facilitating what you know your technical expertise, I guess.

Michael

Yeah, I think that's pretty accurate.

Paul

Yeah. Um was there like a point where um because I think 2020 was the first album that came out that was like basically you both as a duo officially. Was there like a point where you had like a conversation where you were like, hey, you know, this is this is like both of us? Or you know, I I I got the impression earlier on that it was very like a much an organic process.

Michael

Yeah, I think it was kind of organic. I mean, there was like the thing of like all of wanting me to be more of a part of it, I think was part of it. Like they did a show, I think it was just one show they did that they did fully so, and they're like, I hate this, this is terrible. Like, I can't be up here alone. Like, even just from like a logistical thing of like if there's something that goes wrong with like a computer based set, you can get screwed so easily. Yeah, I'm bad with technology, and so yeah, it's really nice having another person up there, but yeah, I it's been a very organic sort of transition into like being a duo, like it doesn't feel like a transition, I think it's more of a transition of how we present it to other people, maybe, yeah, yeah.

Paul

And and um on hinterlands, you know, how how does the process work for that? Do you um is it still sort of designated between Olive? Maybe you kind of take more of like the creative lead and Michael, you more the technical, or or is that kind of blurred more now?

Olive

Definitely mixed now, yeah. Yeah, it's a lot more blurred, which is why I think the music got better, in my opinion. A lot of people love the first DP, but I'm like it's so much better now.

Michael

I think there's like a density that has come through. Um, it's just because of the way we've like iterated on it and stuff like that. But um, yeah, I would say I'm definitely more involved in like a creative sense at this point.

Paul

Big time. Yeah, it's nice to hear as well that you know the the maybe sort of feels a bit weird to sort of say like better than the first EP, but I think it'd be quite depressing if you go in like oh nothing's matched up to that first EP.

Nature As Neighbourhood And Class Access

Olive

Yeah, yeah. Definitely not in that zone with things. I I think like so many artists will say this, but it's like I did that already, we did that already.

Speaker 1

Yeah.

Olive

You can listen to that, you can buy that if you want to, you know. I'm not gonna do it again.

Paul

Yeah. Does that involve having to have conversations with to make sure you don't cover the same ground? Or again, is that like a very kind of natural process?

Olive

I think natural. What do you think?

Michael

Yeah, I think it's pretty natural. I think like we don't like to repeat ourselves too much. Um but it, I mean, it becomes complicated because it's also like you have a fan base, and it's like, well, I also want to like communicate with them and like have that relationship with them and like kind of take them along a journey with you. So sometimes you have to like feed people a little bit of something that they would be expecting from your previous work, maybe, and then kind of like feather it in through some of the other things that you want to do in different ways. I think at this point we've been pretty good about like every release has been different from the last in some particular way. And I think there's a through line that our audience is kind of aware of at this point.

Olive

Yeah, the the space where I don't want to let people down is that, and it's for myself too, is that I still want the music to have like emotional depth and can be something that makes people feel and connect with in a way that can be significant to them, especially if they're going through something.

Paul

Yeah, and I I think I think I I feel like for many people that emotional depth comes with um, yeah, like maybe you're aware of what like your your fans want, but then also not being afraid to go on a little journey away from that a little bit or kind of pursue that. I mean I was wondering for you like what that journey is like.

Olive

On an emotional, like esoteric level or more of a practical level?

Paul

Let's go for the emotional, actually. Yeah, I I'm definitely much more of an emotional level kind of person than a practical one.

Olive

Yeah, I feel like that process ends up being a thing where I personally end up writing from a space of like a made-up story in my head that stirs that emotion within me, and it's not that serious. It could be like a hamster dancing in a field, and I'm thinking about these hamsters dancing, and like it brings me so much joy, and so I can put that in the song. Or on this one, there's a song that is about chocobos in Final Fantasy, like a rider losing its chocobo and um grieving the chocobo, you know. That's the stuff that actually like is gut-wrenching for me. Like, I can't watch um I can't watch like the cute animal Disney movies and stuff without like losing my mind sometimes. I'm a huge fan of like horror films, for instance, but yeah, like a cute animal that's put in peril, that's that's intense for me. So, anyways, um I think about that stuff a lot, and then I also feel like a song doesn't feel fully finished if it doesn't make me like spontaneously dance, laugh, cry.

Paul

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And how how about eat for you, Michael?

Michael

I th I think I have like a sort of a different relationship with it. I think I can be somewhat mechanical where it's like I get really interested in sounds and kind of just like making a space and just sort of a almost like this yes-no attitude where I'm like, yeah, more of that, less of it. It's like it feels more like cooking in a way to me, where it's just like you're trying to balance out the proper flavors and the way that this kind of goes. And I think that's one of the things that is interesting about working with Olive is that there's such a um like I don't want to say it's like it's not about the emotional, it's like the the visuals that they kind of like imagine as something's working is so different than how I I kind of like build things out. And it's really cool when I'm like, okay, what I'm doing is working for me, and then it works for them at the same time. I'm like, okay, then we have something that's that's really working. Because it means it's kind of operating on multiple levels, and there can be kind of this like churning contrast that you get out of that.

Blending Organic And Electronic Sound

Paul

Yeah, I I think that that can make a really nice partnership as well, can't it? Because you're both not doing, you're not trying to reach for the same space. You know, there's a there's a collective idea, but like your actual individual roles aren't encroaching too much, I guess.

Michael

Yeah. Yeah, because if I had like a different image that I was trying to conjure and then Olive had theirs, it's like that could immediately cause problems if those are clashing in some way.

Speaker 1

Yeah.

Paul

Yeah. I mean, one of the big themes is about like the environment, about nature, and I know that different albums specialize in different elements of that specialize, I don't know that's sorry, but but like focus or have an interest in different elements of that. Um right at the beginning, Olive, you mentioned about like walking in nature, you mentioned about the the park. What is it about like natural environments that you know I know that's quite a big question because it's such a big sort of connection to your music, but what is you know, what what is the real connection for you with with nature?

Olive

Yeah, I'm always trying to figure out a way to approach this subject lately without it being this like lofty idea about how we should spend our time in nature and what that means because I think that the outdoors isn't necessarily like this accessible thing to everyone. Um it could be geographically or it could be a class thing, you know, it could be so many, so many things. Um for me, I didn't get a chance to go to a national park until like a last year. You know. So I'm always trying to approach this delicately because it's this idea of like our connection with nature has been like so complicated and co-opted and and made gross and marketed in all of these weird ways. So having said that, for me, that connection is just kind of trying to tap into the realization that like that we are a part of nature, not separate from it in any way, and that's as easy as stepping outside in your city and paying a little bit more attention to the trees that are in your neighborhood, um, going to the park, things like that, spending as much time as I can because I mean the writing's on the wall there. Everybody knows that it it does make us feel better.

Paul

Hmm. Yeah, no, I I I think it was good to have that caveat in that you said before that, and you mentioned about like not going to a national park until last year. So I was I was wondering if, like, from your experiences, maybe in times of life where subjectively, just in terms of your own experience, you've perhaps felt like excluded or limited from say the full gourmands of of like natural experiences that you know I I definitely agree that it's it's not very easy for just just to kind of make a blanket assumption that people can get to nature or experience it in the same way. But then at the same time, I think like again, it maybe it is just equally loaded, like even just appreciating small things, I think, can sometimes be equally loaded sometimes. Um but I I was wondering, like from your perspectives, like what at points in your life where maybe things have been difficult, what like small parts of nature or the natural world Have you managed to sort of find kind of solace in?

Ambient, Library Music, And Labels

Olive

Um definitely as a specific location, Griffith Park. That's near us. But um I think what I realized is having um a consistent connection with the same trees, especially trees in your area. It's like you see them at least once a week for years. That like that relationship, there's a relationship that you can develop there where you feel sort of recognized by them as you do them. Or even the like the local squirrels, you can start to realize, oh, I think that's the squirrel. I think that squirrel's been living in that tree for like four years. That one that yells at me every time, you know. It's like just kind of the way that we develop relationships with people, with our neighbors. These plants and animals um that are non-human are are neighbors too. I I realize that that um developing that relationship feels a lot more profound than personally for me than if I were to go to um some beautiful destination like Yosemite and see these amazing mountains and and waterfalls. Like it's very cool to see them, but I don't necessarily feel that um emotional depth with them because they're not they're not my neighbors.

Paul

Yeah, I mean there is definitely, I mean, I I could I feel this even when I'm visiting a city that I know I'm just visiting for a short time. I remember going to New York and people were saying to me, Oh, you've got to go and see the Statue of Liberty, you've got to go and see this building and that. And I to be honest, I was just really, really spent a lot of time just very happy in in the neighborhood, just getting to know the people in the bodega and and stuff, and just like the little tiny little things like that, you know. And I guess it's the difference it's the difference between sort of I guess just like kind of consumerist tourism and and I'm fair enough, we've all got a little bit of that in us, and but um and sort of slowing down and and just being aware of like you know the the life that exists in a place rather than the spectacle, I guess.

Olive

Right, yeah, that's definitely yeah, well put the connection that I'm drawing there is that um some of those uh nature destinations like the national parks and stuff um can feel empty in that way because it's like you're going to see the Statue of Liberty and you didn't really connect with the area, you're in this town that like I don't even know what city Yosemite is in, you know what I mean? I've been through many times now, you know.

New Age Critique And LA Wellness Culture

Paul

I I wouldn't know, but I'm uh I'm stuck in Europe, so I mean how do you feel that um because again, because your music does just feel so sort of natural and and like uncontrived listening to it, but the balancing of like you know, you got these organic elements and then there's the synthetic elements as well, and they sort of weave in and around continually with each other and sort of like they don't dance with each other, and that's what one of the things I love about the music. You know, is there do you is there ever sort of like a kind of a thought process about like how you blend these in, or is it more of just a question of going, oh, I know what we need to do here, you know, is it is it a thought out thing, or is it just very natural, I guess?

Olive

I think both you should take it down.

Michael

Yeah, I think it's pretty thought out in a way. Like we know what we like, and that's that's part of the thing of like working together. It's like I know the palette of sounds that all of is going to really connect with. And then I also really like messing with the tension of that and and putting something that is kind of artificial in a space. So you get this kind of contrast between something that feels real and feels like an object that you could hold in your hands, and then something that is very spectral and um intangible in a way. And I think like some of those digital sounds can be really interesting in that that sense, but um also just comes from like the sounds that we both like and like grow up with, like whether it's like you know, growing up listening to like the Beatles and the Beach Boys, and it's like their use of sound design and the way that they fill up the spectrum of sound is so interesting, there's so much contrast in that. But then also like listening to like warp records when I was growing up and like being really into like Fortet and Boards of Canada, and I think you can hear sort of the way that they use these like acoustic sounds alongside electronics, or even the way that they choose their electronic sound design in a way that feels more organic and feels like a record that already exists in some way.

Olive

Yeah, we're definitely very consciously aware of it. Um as we're writing too, we're like, oh, maybe this is like this sounds too locked to the grid. So let's also like put some some flourishment in here to make it sound more organic, like an organic instrument. So that's that balance too with the electronic sounds. And then also this particular record we recorded with guitar more, real guitar.

Michael

Yeah. Well, it was both. It's it's a real guitar, and there's a lot of like sampled guitar too. And I think that's also playing with that contrast too of like some of the songs. It was like Olive started writing something that was with like a sampled guitar, and they're using it as like a bass line, and it was like kept trying to figure out what would go with this, and you're like, okay, well, let's try a real guitar on it. And then that was kind of fun, and then just layering it, and that process of as you're putting more and more on this, it's like you start treating the guitar as a synthesizer where you're like not being particular about like, well, you need to play it specifically. It's like a lot of it was like chopped every single note and lined it up in a particular way. I don't yeah, there's a lot to it. I think that that for me is a lot of the fun, is like just trying to like play within that balance. Like, there's I could really talk for like a a couple hours just on that.

Paul

Please do. Yeah, no, no, put you in on pressure there. But yeah, no, I I love that contrast between the organic and the electronic. And it's really interesting that you reference like these kind of real, like you know, people don't often think of like artists like the Beach Boys and the Beatles as being like electronic artists, but I think in a lot of ways they they reached certain little points or epochs in the practice where they did become that really, or or like that the electronic elements really um were a key player in in delivering something that wasn't entirely electronic, you know.

Michael

Yeah, just like the tape manipulation and things like that. Like that is it's like there's a direct through line where you're going from like the Beatles to like you end up at Brian Eno pretty quickly as far as just like studio manipulation, and then yeah, you're already there. Like that's that's a that's the end line. It really doesn't take much of a a leap to get you to the sort of process that's like very similar to you know how we work today of just like sounds are sounds, and you can kind of manipulate them in however makes sense to you.

Playlists, Algorithms, And Background Music

Olive

Yeah, multi multi-part harmony in the beach boys, it's just it's ear candy. So, you know, multi-layered synths is ear candy, it's yeah, yeah.

Paul

Yeah, and and when we listen to them, like we can kind of forget, like it's not a natural thing to have these voices all harmonized with the instrumentation like that. I think even going back to something like Frank Sinatra, and I'm not a big Frank Sinatra fan, but just this idea of having like this sort of quite hushed croonery voice with a big orchestration, and in in reality, you know, if that was just someone singing in a room, you wouldn't hear them, you know.

Michael

Yeah, exactly. There's so much to that too, because it's like you start to get into the context of like what is timbre and like how is that working within sound? I think for a lot of time, particularly up to that point, it's like the discussion was like, Oh, here's melody and here's harmony, and then you start to get into like recorded music becomes about timbre, and then you start seeing people where it's like you know, stacking vocal harmonies is creating um a sort of synthetic sound in this way. Like you start to like lay the overtones in this particular way, and if you do it uh in a certain way, it sounds inhuman, and it's really interesting how you can get to that space.

Paul

Yeah, yeah, definitely. Uh in I mean, uh so mentioning again about like the Beatles there for a second, I and you you you mentioned that they were like you were both listening to them when you were growing up, and I was wanting to know what what else you were listening to, what were like your formative musical experiences?

Michael

Yeah, I mean, for me, it was starting with the Beatles when I was a kid and Beach Boys and stuff like that. And then I went through like so many phases of like trying to trace back like, well, what were these bands into? And so I would like go back through like blues and jazz and like kind of go through that process. And then I don't you end up in weird places. It's like I went through like a lot of like metal phases and then uh like getting really into electronic music when I was in high school too, which is like when I started doing like Ableton, and I think I had like a cracked copy of Fruity Loops when I was like 14, 15 or something like that.

Olive

So badass.

Paul

Yeah. How about you, Olive?

Olive

I started with the monkeys, that wasn't right.

Paul

Well, there's a people's monkeys kind of connection, isn't it?

Olive

It's so funny. It was just because of like the television reruns that happened to me going on at the time. And then um, I was also always listening to the radio station in my town in Florida that was the golden oldies, so Motown all day, every day. I was really obsessed and um collecting a lot of tapes at garage sales of just disco and funk compilations, things like that. And then yeah, I was just really into the monkeys. Um, I even had a mouse that I named Davy Jones. Like in my child brain, this was like I think my first real crush. In my child brain, I'm like having a crush on this man in in the 1960s when he's young, but like not thinking about how old he was at the time. This is a weirdo shit, you know.

Paul

Um you know, it it's preserved, isn't it? There's something preserved up there um with that, yeah. And and you know, we're we we don't really have much control over those kind of crushes either, I think. It's just yeah.

Aggression, Horror Scores, And Live Set Tension

Olive

I mean it was cool, like, you know, at that age, just um seeing the the monkeys TV show, like the outfits at that time in the like mid-60s were so cool, you know, mid to late sixties. And the the haircuts and the bell bottoms and the bright colors and the ascots and this is good stuff, you know. So I'm not mad about it. But um, and then as a teenager was really into yeah, the Beatles and all just all the classic rock stuff, um Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, all that. And um yeah, just exploring that for a while and doing deep dives into the ones that um are less popular in those genres. Yeah, and then I got into metal and and punk music later.

Paul

Yeah, and was there like an entry point for you into electronic music?

Olive

I didn't listen to a lot of electronic music until I met Michael actually. So there'd probably been like stuff in between here and there. But when I started hanging out with Michael, I listened to one-o-tricks and was like, oh shit, you know what I mean?

Speaker 1

Yeah, yeah.

Olive

And then um and then that YMO actually started listening to YMO and was like, that uh actually I think changed my brain with electronic music permanently. Was just yeah, because then also just like getting into Harumi Hosono and Richi Sakamoto's other stuff, that kind of just spurred everything for me um in terms of where I'm at now.

Paul

I can definitely hear a YMO, I don't know, about influence, yeah, like a touch to to what's going on. And it's interesting you mentioned about One Trix, because I always find with One Tricks, like I love listening to One Tricks, but then I can never remember it. And I think that's part of how it works on my brain in a way that I like. It's like it feels so heliocinogenic that it's like um to me, it's like a kind of a like a um a sort of psychedelic trip that I know something happened when I was listening, you know, when I was on it, and I know it sort of has affected me, but I for the life of you I cannot tell you what happened, how it sounded, or anything like that. There's just some kind of alchemy he does with the sounds that seem to sort of make it feel like I can sort of summarize it going, yeah, I think that was the album where there are a lot of like there was like a little commercial music samples involved, but the way he bends it, I I just don't know. It just loses me, but in the best possible way.

Olive

Totally, yeah. I think um a really good electronic artist sometimes leaves you with that feeling of like, how did they do this?

Speaker 1

Yeah. Yeah.

Olive

And then you just you have no idea. So I think that's part of why it's easy to just not have it pictured in your mind or to be able to go over it again. Yeah.

Michael

Yeah, yeah. Sort of like fog-like quality to it. I think because yeah, so much electronic music can be very precise and direct, and so being able to have something that has that sort of smeared experience to it is is very interesting to get that.

Paul

Yeah, yeah, absolutely, definitely. And I I guess with that the kind of idea of like something being I love the way he used the word smeared. Yeah, and it's um I find you know, like there's a little bit of that I find with greenhouse as well, you know. I find like I can pick out things very clearly, but like the way things kind of naturally fold around and weave in and out of each other. And I I feel like you know, the the label ambient does get used, uh, but it doesn't always feel in terms of my opinion, anyway, like and I mean labels are labels, well, whatever, whatever. Uh, but it doesn't always feel like even necessarily a sufficient way to categorize it. And I know no artists like to be categorized, but I mean I was wondering in terms of like say walking into a shop, and if your music is filed under ambient, how does that make you feel? Do you feel connected to like the other records that might be in that uh stack of records, or do you sort of feel like, what is it doing there? My god, we're people are still saying it's ambient, you know?

Olive

Yeah, I feel um I feel that we're not ambient, but I also feel philosophically connected to the term.

Paul

Right. Okay. Yeah. Can you tell me a little bit about what you mean by that?

Art As Fuel For Collective Action

Olive

Yeah, just like that. I think it was the Brian Eno concept of non-hierarchical music where it's just a music that is kind of furniture in some ways. It's not necessarily like imposing itself upon you or asking for a specific kind of participation. More like library music in that way, though. I think about that a lot. I don't know if you could file us at a record store under library music at all because you've only ever been to one record store a library music section.

Paul

Yeah.

Olive

Which is awesome. It's awesome when you find that where you just find like all kinds of different library sounds and stuff. Um but yeah, philosophically, just that it's it's vibes, you know. Right, which is kind of what ambient is, and then also the philosophy with ambient that people don't always adhere to because there's still always a lot of trying to make a genre narrow and copy something that they think is what is gonna qualify them as sounding experimental or ambient. But ideally, the philosophy being that anybody can do it, um that uh it it is an experiment in that way, and that it's so open-ended of a genre. So yeah, it's complicated.

Speaker 1

Yeah.

Michael

I'm fine with ambient as a term for it's again, it's not accurate. I think it's misleading, but it's like, where where else are you gonna put us? Essentially, like they have to, you know, stuff you in some section. And I think it's would be less disorienting for a fan of people that's already into ambient music to pick up one of our records that is maybe less ambient than some of the others. Um and so I think in that sense it makes sense. I don't like it when we get like put into like new age, I think that is a thing that we're more disinterested in because of like there's just so many other connotations that go along with that.

Olive

Yeah, I personally am very against the new age ideology, so yeah, that wouldn't work for me. Yeah, yeah.

Paul

But but I mean, I guess the interesting thing with that, and I totally get it, uh, and I wouldn't put you in New Age even. I to I I feel like I get where you're I could tazzard a guess at where you're coming from about like disagreeing with the ideology, but like to say some like uh normie like bro who's just getting into music, they might go like, well, it's kind of like a little bit like ambient. They s they they're they're they're they talk about nature, there's a meditative quality, you know. Hey dude, why is this not you know new age? I know I was wondering what would you what you would say to them.

Olive

I would say that it doesn't qualify as new age because it doesn't um incorporate eastern sounds that are typical to New Age music that aren't necessarily even Eastern but are associated with an idea of the East. Like it's the chinoiserie of music.

Speaker 1

Yeah.

Culture Wars, Films, And Classed Feminism

Olive

And like a lot of things fit into the New Age category that aren't necessarily hitting on that, but I think the great majority do, and a lot of the the new age greats were talking about new age philosophy when they were performing and things like that.

Michael

Yeah, like we don't have the sort of like cosmic-mindedness um astrology approach that a lot of new age stuff is. I think if we didn't live in LA, we would be more like, yeah, sure, whatever. New age is, you know, new age, but it's like being here, you're in the center of where a lot of these kind of like strange religions and cults kind of formed, and there's still so much of a connection to New Age in the city. It's honestly like really bizarre. I'd never lived in a place where that was real. Like it was just kind of like a funny thing before, and now it's like, no, this is around all the time.

Olive

Yeah, so it forces you to draw more of a line in the sand, definitely.

Paul

Yeah, right. And does that feed a little bit about into what you were saying earlier on about working in the restaurants and seeing sort of like the you know, like the interior of like the the the sort of Hollywood habits, like you know, like the seeing like where like so much of new age is based and perhaps sort of being able to peel behind like certain illusions behind it or something.

Olive

Yeah, I could definitely draw that connection because it is New Age is is very rooted in capitalism.

Speaker 1

Yeah, yeah.

Olive

Yeah, um, wellness culture and new age are definitely um something that's sold to people, this idea that you need to fix yourself, that you're broken all the time, and that you need a teacher or a product to help you fix yourself and all this um stuff around self-improvement, and then the actual practices themselves appropriating from other cultures in order to sell that self-improvement, which you know, capitalism and white supremacy go very, very hand in hand, and new age is like a beautiful, a disgustingly beautiful product of that. So, yeah, I'm not against spirituality, but new age is a very specific thing, and even um the the ideology is the dawning of the new age, which is very like rooted in the Christian cults that believe in the second coming and the all of that kind of thing.

Paul

Oh my god, it's scary biscuits. And and it I mean, I'm again I'm not against spirituality per se, but I guess it's it's the sort of narrowing it to be all about the self rather than about like community or or surroundings that I have a problem with.

Olive

It's brilliant because it keeps us from um working together as a community and getting along with each other and revolting against our government, doing what we need to do, the work that we need to do, because it's just like, well, you can just, you know, do this self-work and you can overcome your traumas. And it's like the traumas are coming from the outside. It's coming from society, it's coming from the need to like the this thing that we need to tear down. So yeah, it's kind of like this this band-aid that especially um us as white people, we need to be wary of that. That there is this this offering, this band-aid that you can put on the wound um to just sort of be complicit and not do the stuff that we need to do. Yeah, and I'm born with that, but yeah.

Paul

Yeah, yeah, no, definitely. And a band-aid is of course something that doesn't like treat something, it just covers covers over something. And um and you know, tying in with what you were saying about like, you know, there's that element of cultural appropriation about taking like again ties in with like white supremacy in capitalism, of like taking these kind of cultural tropes often from eastern parts of the world and and using them as like a kind of an effect rather than uh um anything that has any sort of community bearing or or actual it's not it's not it's it's been taken, it's been extracted, I guess.

Recommendations, Thanks, And Closing Credits

Olive

Yeah, so I guess when it really boils down to it, new age for me, which isn't always true, but the great. Bulk of new age that you would find on the internet today is music that might as well be AI because people are making it for the streams, you know, for the downloads.

Paul

Definitely. And that leads me into actually something else I've got down here, which is about like playlists and algorithms, and often beatless your music isn't entirely beatless, but more like beatless, more contemplative music is is you know sort of thrust into a lot of a lot of playlists. You know, I was wondering what your relationship is with that. Like, do you see uh greenhouse being part or have you noticed Greenhouse on compilations or playlists, or how do you feel about the general idea of more contemplative music, particularly made by artists such as yourselves, where there's like there's there are deeper, more like more philosophical and artistic intentions, but rather than just as we were saying just now, making like a blank hit kind of ambient experience or something, how do you feel about like the categorization of of these kind of playlists?

Michael

Uh feel bad generally in that way, Brash. Um, but it's also yeah, it's a it's an interesting thing, I think, with this project. It's it has done well on playlists in a lot of contexts, and it's interesting to see, and it's also interesting to see like what things get picked up by the algorithms and gets kind of thrown out in that way. I think in particular, like that first EP has done really well. And it's interesting to like see that difference between like some of the other stuff that we have where it's like, oh, there's something else that's going on that we might be more interested in artistically, which is also not to say we're disinterested in the first EP. But um, yeah, it's just interesting to see like what gets picked up by that. But it's yeah, it's a terrible process to kind of be beholden to. Um and you're like constantly throwing statistics at you to see how you're performing. And it's like a very strange thing where um places like Spotify are trying to sell back your own data in this way to get you to conform to a specific artistic process that's very unrelated from what it is to actually be uh a musician. Um yeah, I I mean the whole thing is is really messed up right now, honestly. Like the the Spotify ecosystem in particular is is terrible in how much they're promoting algorithmic stuff. And I think being artists that are often within the ambient category, I think we can sometimes even like catch strays a little bit from musicians that can be critical of that system, where it's like people are are are rightfully pointing out things where it's like aggressive music does not get picked up by the Spotify algorithm. It's constantly these like lo-fi um or like I don't know, down tempo RB or like all these different like things that can be put in the background get promoted heavily by those uh uh algorithms. And something that's more aggressive and more um just like more challenging in some way, maybe, gets completely missed out on. That's that's a really interesting relationship to have as somebody that is then okay. Well, we are interested in the relationship between the listener and the artist and kind of like being something that's like you can put us on in the background, and we like the experience of like these little moments will pop out at you. And that relationship with listening is very akin to sort of that like dreamlike, almost like psychedelic sort of listening experience where you don't really know where you are and you find these little moments, and I think that's really interesting. But then you have artists that are just like fully like, we're just making background music and don't care, and it's like that sucks to like you're missing out on uh a level of the experience with that.

Olive

Yeah, it sucks to get lumped into that too when people are um criticizing that right now, yeah.

Paul

Yeah, yeah, no, I mean I mean, what is I think you know there's a world of difference, I think, between what you're doing and and the kind of music we're talking about there, but like just taking that broad step back and how people can categorize just you know, perhaps even without listening, you know, algorithmically and and um do you feel like you you have got an aggressive album in you? Do you feel that you could could that because you but you both said you love a bit of metal and stuff?

Olive

Um yeah, I think we were dying to do uh a film score, a film score for a horror movie so that we can because we both have so much of that in us. Um it's so funny.

Michael

We've done a lot of that historically. Yeah, I used to do a lot of like DIY, like experimental and like free improv and noisy stuff.

Olive

Your stuff was always on that darker side, yeah.

Paul

Yeah. If you could pick a horror film that already exists to like re-score.

Michael

Um it's not necessarily like a straight horror film, but Eraserhead is always my go-to in that way. I've done like sort of these improvised film score ensembles before, and we did Eraserhead one time, and it's by far my favorite. It's just I mean, it's probably my favorite film in general, but it just leaves so much space and it's really interesting. And then even just the original, its use of sound is so unique and just foreboden and just uh incredible. Yeah, that's a good idea.

Olive

Yeah, I think Greenhouse and Wickerman might be cool.

Michael

Yeah, Wickerman would be great.

Olive

But like I hesitate to say that because I'm like the part of Wickerman that's so perfect is the music that's in it because you have like these like music video moments basically, and it's all folk, so it would be it would be a challenge, but yeah, I mean Wickerman is kind of a musical, isn't it? Yeah, yeah, a little bit.

Paul

Yeah, but they're both excellent. Yeah, I'd I'd love to see I'd love to hear the rescores of those.

Olive

But yeah, like Yeah, I'd like to just yeah, a chance to do a little rescore for fun.

Paul

Yeah. I mean maybe the songs could even remain in like maybe like I I could imagine with the Wickerman like being more like a remix of of it or something, or like uh like literally just a different mix of how it sounds with different instruments in it or I don't know, maybe I'm just getting carried away in my own bubble about what it would sound like.

Olive

No, good idea. Or the brood the brood would be a fun one for yeah, that's one of my favorite Cronenbergs for sure.

Paul

It's that one of Oliver Reed.

Michael

Uh yes, it is. Yeah, it's the psychoplasmics or whatever his whole thing is. Yeah, it's definitely an underrated Cronenberg, I think. But it's such a solid one. It's like one of the best winter movies, I think.

Paul

Yeah, it kind of flies under the radar a bit, I feel, doesn't it? Compared to like, say, like like the the I don't know, scanners or or like his more like can kind of later films. It sort of feels like it's sort of somewhere between both of those. And um, I think there's something about those early ones as well. There's something very clammy. Um, and I think that's a good thing, really. Like I feel like I've got a bit of a cold sweat when I watch like an early Gronenberg.

Michael

Yeah, yeah. I've never heard the term clammy for that, but I really like that.

Olive

That's actually that I was like, that's exactly the feeling that those give you.

Speaker 1

Definitely.

Olive

I think you want to score that feeling to be. See, that's what's great too, though, though, getting to play with the whole span of of human emotion. It's like I crave doing that. I want to I want to also make music that um plays with making you feel bad, you know, in like a really special way. I love that.

Michael

Yeah. I think we've gotten opportunities to do like little moments. Like we opened for Drew McDowell at the Lot Room here in LA, and we definitely leaned more into like doing these sort of interludes between tracks that like pushed something a little bit darker, a little bit noisier. So it can be like a certain context and things like that.

Olive

But yeah, we move noise for that too, where it's like good noise like almost hurts your ears, but it doesn't.

Michael

Yeah, necessarily volume, just yeah.

Paul

Do you feel that the live version can like leave the records more?

Olive

Yeah, definitely. And um, it's something that we're working on doing a little bit more in our live set because it just makes more sense for us and it's also more fun for us. Yeah.

Michael

Yeah. I think with this album in particular, we're like trying to figure out how to do this one live. And it's like if we were to do sort of like reworking stems and kind of just building it out that way, it's gonna feel too much like it's just canned and we just hit a space bar or something like that. It's just these it's so orchestrated in this way. So, like I think we have a lot of freedom in how difficult it will be to figure out some of this stuff live to rework it and kind of rebuild and do something very different. And I think, yeah, I think this one is going to be like a pretty strong deviation from what's on the record.

Paul

Nice, nice, yeah. And and I was wondering like what feeling you want hinterlands to leave with people, like you know, when people listen to it, what do you feel like you want them to feel?

Olive

I want people to feel after listening to it like they have the energy to fight for what we need to fight for right now. That's my hope. That it's something that helps us to recalibrate and take a moment and then get back out there.

Paul

Yeah.

Olive

I mean that's the times we're living in.

Paul

It's just I mean, maybe that's where the self-care has to go, you know, towards restoring people for the greater outward fight. I don't know. Uh because it seems to be so much of it at the moment, you know.

Olive

Yeah.

Speaker 1

Yeah.

Olive

Yeah. I think um listening to to music, which again I'm very grateful if anybody finds my music inspiring in the way that I find other music inspiring, um filling yourself with uh inspiration from from art, music, you know, film, anything like that. That goes such a long way in giving you the emotional and mental capacity to take on the hardship of the now. So I I I I don't even necessarily like to look at it as self-care. Because I think greater acts of self-care are more like dancing, going out dancing with your friends or just being with people, things like that. Like that feels deeper to me. But um, I think that art gives you that little bit of juice in your engine, you know.

Michael

Yeah, I think I could be really skeptical of like that, yeah, music is self-care and it's like uh this is a thing that's beneficial in that way. But it's I have been doing it recently, even just with like what going through and watching a lot of like old films. I think I've been really frustrated artistically with where we're at culturally, and I'm just like if there's this overall feeling that like everything sucks right now, and then I just kind of go back and I've like watch these things that are good, and like there's like amazing stuff out there, and that means there's also more incredible things that can be done. Yeah, um, and I it kind of leaves me with this really nice feeling, and it is this like exercise that you have to do, like you have to put in the work to be like, all right, I'm gonna sit down and watch the like three-hour Tarkovsky movie.

Speaker 1

Yeah, yeah.

Michael

And I'm I don't necessarily like I'm not always in the mood to do it, but then it's like when I actually like do it, I I feel so much better for like a week after. So like there's just like this kind of glow that you can carry around with you for the for the rest of your life, really. And so yeah, it it does so much. And so as much as it feels silly to be like making art in a time when there's so much going on that feels really terrible, and this seems like the smallest little bit, I also like recognize like it has the ability to do things, as skeptical of that as I have been.

Olive

There's power in it. I think it's a very important piece of humanity that in some cultures, our culture is um overlooked or diminished in ways that almost seem like a psyop or intentional, you know, because it it is so powerful to the human psyche um and so needed. So that yeah, that helps with the motivation to keep making art right now because it is not easy to put together a record right now and to feel inspired to create something, and then also when financially it's so bad, the music industry. Um just all of that bogging you down and then the LA fires and just like everything and fascism and everything. Um it's really hard, but yeah, to remind ourselves that there's power in that. So it's can it's something that's bigger than us, is really important.

Paul

Yeah, 100% agree. And I also think it's um we need to document the times regardless of good or bad as well. There needs to be there need to be documentation made by people that care. Um, and I think artists generally, I mean actually I was gonna say artists generally care, but I think you know, in the last few years we've seen that there's a lot of artists that are fucking arseholes, but um yeah, you know, like let's go play television. Yeah, yeah exactly, exactly. You know, totally didn't have to do that.

Olive

Didn't you didn't have to do that?

Paul

No, no, fucking how insane. Yeah, who we who are we talking about here? So sorry.

Olive

Oh Radiohead.

Paul

Yeah, I mean oh Radiohead, of course.

Michael

That's immediately where I went mentally. There's a lot of weapons.

Paul

Yeah, I I watched one battle after another a couple of days ago, and I really enjoyed it, but I felt very compromised knowing that I was enjoying the music. It felt like a very difficult thing to like the music is fucking brilliant to this film, but the guy that made it is just um a terrible human.

Michael

Yeah, I saw it at Quintarantino's theater too. So there were like layers of it going on. So many things. It's yeah, I don't know, it's it's these like institutional, like sort of Hollywood things, and you're just like, yeah, it's just so baked into culture to just continue these systems that are causing so many problems.

Speaker 1

Yeah.

Michael

And making great films, but geez, yeah, I was that was such a hard film to watch in that way. It was a hard film to enjoy, but it somehow got through it. But it's yeah, even then, I I feel I feel like I have a hard time even just giving it credit at a certain level.

Paul

I think in a few years' time it might be a lot, uh it might I feel like there might be like a lot of smoke that might have cleared and it might about that film, uh, and it might be very easy to have a more clearer sort of objective look at like saying, Hey, you know, everyone loved it at the time. But you know those things that people love at the time, then a few years later everyone's like, oh my god, did we really like get lucky? But in a more serious political context, it might be a bit more shut off from things. I don't know. I don't know.

Michael

Yeah, you never know how things are gonna look back on. I think like it not to just continue talking about movies, um, but it's just like looking back at like the Barbie movie thing, and you're just like, what happened to us? What we were all so excited for that, and I haven't watched it.

Olive

No, because I I rewatched it the other day and I was like, I don't like this movie.

Michael

I was like, what was it?

Paul

What what changed about it for you re-watching it?

Olive

Well, I mean, it's not super serious because I didn't I um I wasn't like thinking it was like this great movie to begin with necessarily, but I did think that the negative reaction to it was like overdone at the time. But after re-watching it, I was just like, damn, this is just really like holding a toddler's hand through the teaching of feminism. Like it's so 101 white feminism in a type of way that just feels really like it's just cringe, you know? Yeah, it's not necessarily like a problem. That was my thing. Like, I don't I don't think we need to make it a problem, but it's cringy.

Paul

A little bit.

Olive

Yeah.

Paul

Yeah. Yeah. Do you think like a little bit of that can be kind of a good as a sort of gateway to maybe like uh someone who's just like maybe been shielded from feminism or something, or or do you think it's more just like patronizing or off the point?

Olive

Probably more so that second one, unfortunately.

Paul

Yeah, okay, yeah.

Olive

Yeah. I mean, for me, like I always felt um that there were some aspects of feminism or queer theory, things like that, that um didn't resonate with me until I found the right people because I did not go to college and I didn't come for money. So that's a big thing. Um, that director in particular, when she she you know did movies like she did a an adaptation of little women or whatever, and it's just like it's about these, you know, upper middle class people. And she did a movie, I think it was Francis Haw that was about the post-college slump of like an you know upper middle class woman. It just it's unrelatable for me in a lot of ways. Also feels almost like it's keeping you out because you need to have a certain like grasp or understand baseline understanding of the like the language that's being used in academia. So I not to say that um I haven't gained a lot from academia and all the people who've you know within that system have worked tirelessly and written books that um have been super useful to me. But yeah.

Michael

Yeah. I think there's like that connection to new age almost in this way, where it's like you're selling the package of the thing that can be good, like the experience of being outside, the experience of connecting to nature and all these things. It's like the same as some sorts of films and and media in general can just sort of repackage those things in a way where it is like becomes this just intangible experience that's not not related to how you're how you're doing it. I think Catherine Liu's uh book about the professional managerial class, I think she has a lot of uh great insight into sort of the relationship between sort of this like middle class ideology and sort of the way in which media and culture shapes itself around this uh idealistic form of that.

Paul

Right, okay. Um, well, I'll put a link down to that book actually in the in the podcast description so people can check it out a bit more. Yeah.

Olive

Yeah, I'd say it's worth it.

Paul

Yeah. Thank thank you. That was it. Um thank you both. Okay, so that was me, Paul Hamford, talking with Olive and Michael from Greenhouse, and we had that conversation on February the 23rd, 2026. Thank you so much, the pair of you, for sharing your time and thoughts with me that I really enjoyed having that chat. I think it went to some really interesting places, and yeah, the album Hinterlands is out very shortly on Ghostly International. Um, I'm I'm a little bit overtired today, so I didn't write the date of when it's out in front of me now, but so I'll make sure I put that in the podcast description. Please go and check it out, it's great. If you like the show and you haven't already, please also give the give Lost and Sound a subscribe, give the show a rating and a review on a platform of your choice if you do have the time to do so. I know we're all so busy these days, but if you do have that time, it's really, really super appreciated. Audiotechnica are the sponsors of Lost and Sound. The global but still family run company that make headphones, turntables, cartridges, microphones, studio quality yet affordable products, because they believe that high-quality audio should be accessible to all. So wherever you are in the world, head on over to audiotechnica.com to check out all of their range of stuff. The music that you hear at the beginning, at the end of every episode of Lost and Sound, is by Tom Giddens. Hyperlink in the podcast description. So yeah, that's it. That's it for for this week. Hope whatever you're doing today, you're having a really fantastic one. And yeah, I'll chat to you soon.