Ethan Gold Talks New Album, Single And More

On screen and off, San Francisco-raised countercultural explorer, Ethan Gold has sketched outlines of the lives lived by the world’s curious outliers for two decades as a musician and composer. Now, the artform-spanning Los Angeles and Berlin-based songwriter’s grasp of life and love at the margins is written large over The Inhibitionists, the latest, pulsating single to be drawn from his third, meticulously assembled solo album, ‘Earth City 2: Nightfolk.’

 

When did you begin songwriting?

Somewhere in the 7th century, in a field with cold springs, in what’s now Northumberland.

 

What is your earliest musical memory?

Banging on a piano to get away from what was down the hall at home. A lot of low notes.

 

You will be releasing your new album ‘Earth City 2: Nightfolk’ on 26th September 2025. How did you want to approach the making of the album?

 

One little part of my rebellion against disposable non-compostable culture is to make a trilogy of albums, in a world where the focus is on singles, and artists are being told to shove hooks into the first few seconds of songs to make them pop. Instead of sweating 10 seconds, I’m expanding into several hours, but rolling it out slowly, like Lord of the Rings, but without rings or hobbits. Earth City is about our separation from ourselves, from each other, and from the natural world. Earth City 2: Nightfolk is the nightlife record. Which, for an introvert, sometimes mean flights of mind. Trains and subways run through the album, in the lyrics but also with some sounds I recorded with a phone stuck out the windows of subways in New York, Berlin, and London.

 

Where did you record the album and who produced it?

 

I produced it, and it was recorded a lot of places, but some of the main ones were my friend Cal Campbell’s studio in Nashville, with Euan Burton in Glasgow, and my kitchen in Los Angeles. In the spirit of Earth City I deliberately recorded in a lot of places, and mixed with different people. The many become one, but I’d say the heart and soul of this record is from California and Scotland.

 

Do you have any interesting, funny or memorable stories from the album recording sessions?

I write a lot in my sleep, and this has been true for years, but on this collection in a few cases I used my note-taking on my phone, which sometime starts in the middle of the night, on the record itself. So the dudes who mixed songs where this was a factor — Adam Moseley and Neal Ostrovsky — had to do some heroics to sonically improve some elements. I also went a bit crazy thinking about the spiritual ramifications of the precise tuning. For the music heads reading, you can enjoy the OCD that I did songs at A = 432, 440, 435, and 442, and chose for each song based on what level of freedom I felt each song needed to express. I might not go so crazy with this kind of thing next time.

 

Did you use any particular instruments, microphones, recording equipment to help you get a particular sound/tone for the record?

The Earth City feeling is, specifically, many things, so I had no allegiance to certain instruments or studios. I generally use Pro Tools, but try to use it reasonably close to how one works on tape. I am pretty allergic to the way a lot of modern pop music sounds. I like layers of real instruments playing different things. When I was recovering from a head injury a few years back I was reminded of how much I love music and art that has multiple layers – lines intertwining, to quote a guitarist from Squatney you may know — so the brain can listen at different levels, and find new pathways and synergies. This kind of music is food for the holy wires. In my humble rock music I try to make a digestible form of this complexity.

 

One of your tracks is the single ‘The Inhibitionists’. What was the story/inspiration behind the track?

This is my ode to all of us who wander the city streets late at night making magic in the fields and warehouses and abandoned buildings. The title is a little pun and word I made up. I’m the opposite of an exhibitionist. I think pretty much half of people are like this, even though the world now seems to be all about everyone turning themselves into walking billboards. “The Inhibitionists” is a romantic song for nervous people who love privacy.

 

The single is accompanied by an official music video. What was the thought process behind the video and who directed it?

 

I directed the video, and have directed a number of videos over the years, for myself and once in a while for other people. When I made “The Inhibitionists” I was living in Berlin, performing and avoiding the smoke at a bar in Kreuzberg almost every week. I cast two friends from the scene there. We did stuff at the bar, and ran around on the U-Bahn, and Görlitzer Park, and this erstwhile couple represented the spirit of romance, urban adventure, and also introversion. The video is a love letter to a side of Berlin that isn’t techno.

 

Was it a difficult album to write?

I write a song every couple days, often starting in dreams, so writing isn’t my albatross. Marketing is my albatross. Social media is my kryptonite. I’m happy do in-depth interview like this though.

 

Which of your new album tracks hear you at your a) happiest, b) angriest and c) most reflective?

Happiest – “When the Evening Comes”.

Angriest – “I’m Always Sad.”

Most reflective — I can’t not say “Mirror Don’t Have Any Feelings” – that question is a setup for this album.

 

What two things do you hope to have achieved once you have left the stage?

Presence. As many people as possible, including myself, feeling like we were actually there. This is getting harder and harder to achieve in this world on a moment-to-moment basis. I’m pro-animal, pro-human, pro-plant, pro-tree, pro-water. Technology is currently winning, and I’m trying to play the game to beat the game. This is a battle many try.

 

Do you have any favoured stage instruments, effects, pedals, microphones etc?

I’m not a gearhead. I got a cheap Harley Benton guitar in Berlin which I like because it’s tiny and has a tuner and sounds decent for something I can carry on my back. I do like my old MXR Phase-90 as my ‘here’s an effect’ moment on stage. In the studio I use whatever I can, and play around a lot, but on stage I’m currently leaning very raw, maybe again as a rebellion against technology. I am disgusted by the number of bands that use backing tracks, or even lead tracks, including ‘punk’ bands I’ve seen, in their live shows. So, sounding raw on stage is my middle finger to all that. I don’t find live to be ever sonically pleasurable as a fan anyway. I save the sonic pleasure for recordings, and live is about being there and being raw.

 

Where is your hometown and could you please describe it in five words?

 

San Francisco. Fog, memory, wet streets, grey.

 

How do you look after your voice?

Not well enough, but I have warmups from some vocal lessons I took years ago, which I recorded and still use. I spray various ginger-bee-honey-herb things sometimes. I want to improve my habits. Part of that might be honouring the introvert and talking less at parties and bars, because that thrashes my voice.

 

Who designed the album artwork?

 

Still working on it. It’s going to be a long week. I want to incorporate faces and trains, and am debating how colourful or how minimalist to be.

 

You are given the opportunity to write the score for a film adaptation of a novel that you enjoy. Which novel is it and why?

I love Tolstoy, but I don’t know if I could bear flying my soul to Russia to do War and Peace or Anna Karenina. Don’t know if that’s a question you ask everyone, but I do score films sometimes. I’d like to do a romantic simple piano score sometime for a French film, that’s an old dream. But scoring takes over my soul, which is why I do it sparingly. I’d rather reserve the deep mining operations for my own mission.

 

Who is in your touring band and what do they play? Or do you tour solo?

Recently I’ve been exploring duos in a few incarnations, with Friedemann Dittmar on piano in Europe, and with my brother Ari on ukulele, since we’re currently on a film festival run for our feature film Brother Verses Brother. I’ll do solo shows here and there. Not too far down the road I’d love to be doing a run with a five-piece band to play more like my recordings.

 

Who are some of your musical influences? Do you have any recommendations?

I don’t sound like David Bowie, but his was the first music I ever bought and he’s still a favourite. I found my way to Eno as well. I love John Lennon, Leonard Cohen, Nick Drake, Elliott Smith. There is a lot of searing pain in those boys, with the possible exception of Cohen, who seems to have enjoyed the sensuous side life a bit more, and also found more peace, maybe due to living longer. Grace Jones’s Compass Point recordings are a secret influence that literally zero people will hear, but those records affected my production thinking. My strongest recommendation of something you probably don’t know is a San Francisco band called The Size Queens, whose songwriting I loved so much that I joined the band on bass and guitar. It’s not my band; I was just there to help. It’s searing, funny, political, brutal, heartbreaking, ugly, gorgeous writing and music from the underbelly of the city, the Tenderloin. They have literally around 30 monthly plays on Spotify, which makes me disgusted with the world, but I made a couple playlists to help people maybe get into them.

 

Do you have any live dates planned in the UK/Europe in 2025?

I’m going to be working the film festival circuit for Brother Verses Brother as my main travel focus. My brother directed, and I’m the co-star, composer, co-writer, and main songwriter, and we’re looking for a distributor for it. Francis Ford Coppola just joined the project as Executive Producer so he believes in the film, which is mind boggling. It’s about music, life struggles, family dynamics, and it’s also a love letter to our hometown, particularly the North Beach neighbourhood where the Beat poets and our father used to wander.

 

What makes Ethan Gold happy and what makes you unhappy?

 

I hate people who hate people. Ergo, I hate myself. See what I did there? But seriously, the destruction of the biosphere makes me very unhappy. I love music, and tide pools, and urban wandering in the rain, and forest hikes… wait, is this a dating site?

Feature Image Photo Credit: Shane Lopes

Ethan Gold – The Inhibitionists is out now.

From the album ‘Earth City 2: Nightfolk’ released on Friday 26th September 2025.

For more information visit: www.ethangold.com

Official LinkTree: https://linktr.ee/ethangold