Dark Appalachian dark folk artist Cinderwell (aka Amelia Baker) joins Femme Metal Webzine to reflect on a dynamic chapter in her artistic journey. From scoring her first film What We Dream of Then to collaborating with Terzij de Order, performing at Roadburn, and celebrating the re-release of her self-titled debut EP, Amelia continues to expand her creative horizons. In this interview, she speaks candidly about the evolution of her sound, the emotional connections behind her work, and the exciting projects that lie ahead. With thanks to Lauren Barley from Rarely Unable.
Welcome to Cinderwell
So, Amelia, welcome to Femme Metal Webzine. First of all, I want to thank you for joining me here today, and secondly, how is this period treating you?
Yeah, it’s great to meet you. It’s been good! It feels like it’s been a long summer. I was touring a lot up until June, and since then I’ve had a bit of time off. It’s been really nice to work on other projects and not be getting on so many planes.
Working on a score
Speaking of projects, you’ve just scored a movie called What We Dream of Then. And I wanted to ask how the experience of working on this score was for you, and how this collaboration came about.
It was really great. I’ve been excited about getting into scoring for film and TV for a while now. And the composer Zachary Greer reached out to me. He’s based in New Brunswick, Canada, and was the main composer on the film. He brought me in to do live strings. He had some ideas for how they should sound, and then I took some of it into my own hands. It was a wonderful experience — I learned so much from him about the entire process. Seeing music that I’ve made set to picture was really, really exciting.
Working on a score (part 2)
So, hopefully, that will be the first of many projects like this. I’m also working on another project this fall — I can’t say much about it yet, but it’s very exciting. I’m thrilled to begin this kind of work. It feels very intuitive to me, even though I’m not formally trained in film composition.
There’s just something about the process that feels quite natural. And you’re appealing directly to the empathy of the story and the characters. It’s really exciting to write in a different context.
Facing a new musical challenge
You know, I wanted to ask you—you mentioned that this was a really important collaboration. So, what was the greatest challenge you went through? You are an artist, not primarily a film composer, and I imagine that transition can also be quite challenging.
Yeah, I feel kind of lucky. What I’m learning is that for composers who are hired to do a lot of different types of projects, it can be really hard. You might be scoring a comedy, then a commercial, and then a horror film—there’s so much jumping around.
As I said, I’m coming at this as a musician who has already developed a sound through my recording project. So, it feels like I’m simply being asked to do what I already do. The process is obviously different because it’s not as free as just recording a record. But I do feel like I already know which expectation there is in terms of the sound.
Like I’m not, I’m not being asked to like write a jingle for like a kid’s commercial or something. So I was able to just do these kind of layers of like eerie emotive strings. And that’s like my favorite thing to do.
Cinderwell: “musically it just feels like it’s opening doors”
So I’m sure as I keep working in this way, I’m gonna run into a lot of technical challenges and stuff. However, musically it just feels like it’s opening doors more than it’s like constricting me. Because you’re asked to write something that’s not in the form of a song. And sometimes it’s like really not, it’s not as personal.
I’m not trying to like mine my own experience for something to write about. I’m like what’s this character? Like what’s the arc of the scene? And that’s quite fun.
The learning curve and collaborating with Tenzij de Horde
Well, in a way, it’s also a learning curve because it’s something you can use for your next album, for example. The more you learn, the easier it is to face whatever challenges come your way.
Yes, exactly. There’s so much benefit in it. It’s like I’ll be messing around with new instruments and new recording techniques, and you’re so right. It’s like all that could be, it all feeds into each other.
That’s right. You know, speaking of collaboration, I know that in October, Terzij de Order will release a new album. And I know that you collaborated with them. That’s a completely different musical genre, even for you. So, I was curious how you approached that.
Yeah, they asked me to do it a while ago. Through a lot of discussion, we landed on me creating a kind of… it’s not quite an interlude. But it’s a section within a track which they had already recorded.
Essentially, the blast beats slow down, and the track just kind of opens up. I added some strings, and they had lyrics they’d written. After listening, I suggested that it would actually be more interesting to do a bit of spoken word instead of me singing. So, that was a new element for me.
But I love it. I like that there seems to be this interest from these heavier bands to incorporate this kind of—it’s still heavy, but it’s at a slower, less busy pace. It’s cool how well the two elements complement each other. Yeah, absolutely.
Cinderwell playing at Roadburn 2025
I completely agree with you. You know, speaking of ‘heavier’ music, this year you also played at Roadburn. Which is, in a way, the mecca for all types of music. How did it feel for you to perform there? Terzij de Order has also played there quite a number of times, so in a way, you are colleagues.
Yeah, definitely. It was really fun on that tour because I actually got to meet all of them. Previously, we had only communicated via email and Zoom, so… I almost wish I had met them before recording. But that’s just the way it went, and they are genuinely nice people. It felt like it made more sense to me once I met them. And, like you said, realized we’re really all in the same community.
And Roadburn was amazing. I had been wanting to play it for years. I actually went one time when I was on a very DIY tour in the Netherlands with my friends. We were playing as a band. And we just had a day off, so we went to hang out with some friends who were at Roadburn. We didn’t have tickets, but we kind of hung around and even tried busking, which didn’t go very well!
Cinderwell playing at Roadburn 2025 (continue)
So, it’s a funny personal anecdote to know that that was the first time I was there, and then I was finally playing it. I just loved it , I thought it was so well-curated; the lights, the sound, and everything were just really dialed in. Indeed, I had such a nice time meeting people, seeing old friends, and playing and I really enjoyed it.
Sometimes when you have an anticipated performance like that, you wonder if you’ll just be nervous or if your head will really be in it. I just got lucky—I felt very present and enjoyed every second of playing. It was great.
Cinderwell re-releases the self-titled EP
Well, it’s great to hear that. I mean, it’s the best feeling and the best experience that you can get at the end of the day. And this year also marked in a way the re-release of your self-titled debut EP via Contrazst Records. In that occasion, I wanted to ask you, how does it feel to have it back on the market after so many years and what you can recall about writing that album and publishing it back then?
Yeah, it was pretty special because I recorded that record in Portland in 2015 and it was just like basically my friend August, who I lived in this house with, he had a four-track tape recorder and knew that I was starting this solo project and was like, let’s record something.
So we did that and it was just really like, yeah, he just set up a little desk in my bedroom and I got some other friends to play on it. And August was actually killed in a shooting in Minneapolis two years ago and it was a really extremely tragic situation. It was a house concert and yeah, there was just like this kind of, it was basically a hate crime towards the LGBTQ punk scene. Really awful.
Cinderwell re-releases the self-titled EP (continue)
So putting this record out on vinyl was kind of like, I had thought about it but it was also really Philip at Contraszt Records who made it happen and it was just like definitely an honor of August to do that. So when I was at Roadburn and saw Philip and actually saw the vinyl for the first time, I was like, it was very moving because yeah, just like so much has happened since we made that record and I think August would have been really just excited and proud.
The latest release of Cinderwell: Cadence
To move to a more recent topic, I wanted to bring up Cadence, your album released in 2023. I’ve been listening to it a lot recently, and I feel it acts as a bridge between Appalachian folk and Irish sounds. I have to be honest, I feel completely lost in the music.
Since the album came out two years ago, what do you recall about the process of compiling and putting the songs together?
Yeah, it’s funny how time happens, yeah, it’s been, yeah, it’s crazy. And you know, when you’re recording something, like it was released two years ago. But I was working on it so much before that, so it really does feel like a long time ago and quite a different time. Because I think when I was recording that record, it was in that period of time where like it wasn’t locked down anymore.
Some of the songs were written like really during COVID but it was that like couple year period after. Where things were just kind of strange, like we thought things were back to normal but when I look back on it, I realize it was, yeah, I was in a in a strange headspace and I was very transient between California and England and Ireland and it was all kind of, yeah, conceived like in all of those places really.
Recording at the Hen House Studios
So I recorded most of it here in Los Angeles at Hen House Studios in Venice and it was my first time working with the engineer Harlan Steinberger and I just like, I think I learned so much in the process of recording and like settled into, yeah, I just like really enjoyed the recording process.
I also collaborated a lot with the drummer, Philip Rogers, he was a friend of mine from growing up actually and we really like reconnected around that time. So that was a really like enjoyable part of it, was bringing songs to him and we did a lot of the arranging together and yeah, it was special. I think I felt really good when it was completed because it was a long process.
“Other times they make more sense later”
Yeah, I can imagine. I mean, if the release was in 2023, you were probably already working on it around 2020 — so in a way, we’re going back almost five years.
Yeah, yeah, and yeah, that’s a long time.
Yeah, it feels like such a long time ago, but I don’t know — when I listened to the album, it still felt completely fresh, you know? I still love that album, and I listen to it pretty often — it really still stays with me.
Yeah, thank you, it’s cool to hear. It’s funny how records are, sometimes they like make sense when they come out and other times they make more sense later or it could be a lot later, you know, we just, we don’t know.
Yeah, the issue with album is that the first time when you listen to them, yeah, you need just time to understand them. So that can be also throughout the years in a way, that’s how it works with me and I think I’m not the only one in a way. So, I’m also amazed how it sticked with me, the album, you know, and I still love it. That’s really cool, thank you.
Cinderwell collaborates with Lankum’s Cormac MacDiarmada
Well, I know you collaborated with Cormac MacDiarmada from Lankum on the album. What did you learn from that experience?
Oh, it was really fun. I’ve known Cormac for a long time and I asked him to play strings on it and I’ve done some of the strings. I had done some of the strings myself as well, but Cormac just approaches them so differently. Like so much, there’s so much like rhythm and wonkiness and like real creativity to what he does there. His contribution to “Two Heads, Greymare” was, yeah, total game changer.
I remember thinking that that song wasn’t great, I was like, it was just kind of buried in like the record to me, I didn’t have like much interest in it and that was the first one that he sent back a demo of, like him just self-recorded some strings and it completely changed it for me and he was like, this is the best song on the record, this should be the first song on the record, so I fully flipped it around and he was right that it was perfect to be the first song on the record.
Collaborating with Tenzij De Horde
Amelia, you’ve had quite a lot happening recently — from your scoring projects to the new collaboration with Tenzij De Horde, which was released in October. Do you have plans for a new release soon, or are you planning to take things a bit slower for now?
Yeah, I’ve actually recorded a whole record already. It’s almost been done for a year. So yeah, it’s just at this point just figuring out how and when to get it out, but it’s very much complete. And yeah, creatively I’m like working on so many other things, but I keep having to remember that I have this thing that is ready to go. So hopefully, fingers crossed in the next year or sooner that will be out. Well, I’m looking forward then.
Closing words
Well, Amelia, I just want to sincerely thank you for your time and for doing this interview. I really hope you enjoy it, and truly, it’s been an honor speaking with you tonight.
Oh, it’s so lovely, thank you, it’s so nice, like, yeah, your questions were so just thoughtful and very enjoyable, thank you. Oh, thank you so much, really, thank you so much.