Today we’d like to introduce you to Galalee Wright & Jesse Hatten.
Hi, Galalee Wright & Jesse Hatten; please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
We are embalmingEva, a self-taught female dreamy synth duo. We were born and raised in Duluth, MN, by our loving families and, of course, the gorgeous Lake Superior. The current version of our music journey is recent, within the last few years; however, we have been creating together since early elementary school. We were encouraged to meet by our parents, who connected over having young girls with a fascination with writing, and for that, we are forever thankful. Our first hangout was filled with sharing piano tunes, writing spooky songs about rats, and improvising together. Shortly after discovering our knack for collaboration, we daydreamed about live performance. With all the confidence of 8-year-olds, we began to play locally at music cafes, restaurants, local festivals, and, most memorably, an aquarium. During this time, we also, both separately and together, experienced pivotal family changes that would shape us and our relationship for the rest of our lives. At a very young age, Galalee Wright struggled with the pain of an absent parent & Jesse Hatten dealt with the grief of the loss of her beloved father. These hardships only drove our musical passion further. Soon, our duo became a trio, calling ourselves “Brown Eye Blue Eye” and welcoming Dylan Hatten (Jesse’s sister) into our music. Her ability to harmonize and bird-like windy vocalizations added a softness to the original sound that our then-loyal community viewers loved.
After several years of building a local reputation for original indie folk three-part harmony & piano compositions, we began to feel the social weight of being known and perceived. This became too heavy for us as we felt self-conscious and overly self-aware in our early teens. The three of us began to retreat into our lives, focusing on navigating school and making it out alive. While this sounds dramatic, all of us have experienced deep self-doubt and bullying for as long as we can remember. With determination, we all made it through many school & life changes while maintaining the important core of our friendship and souls: music. Because of our shift in willingness to publicly share our art, we individually continued to write behind closed doors, find our style, collect words, & obsess over our craft in the hopes we would one day get the courage to share again.
Our childhood writings were focused on calling to light the bits and pieces of the world we were drawn to, including climate change, environmental strife, war, hardship, death, and other similar topics that have always pulled on our heartstrings. In 2020, when the pandemic shutdowns began, we (Jesse Hatten & Galalee Wright) were isolated and, much like the rest of the world, became fearful of outside happenings more than ever before and rapidly. We were entering another pivotal life milestone that could either squash our creativity and launch us into a dark space, or we could harness our sudden downtime and outpouring of emotion into more art. We chose to expand our art in the only way we could when the live arts were silenced; we went digital.
Going digital was the most life-changing decision we had ever made regarding our quality of life and expression of music. With very little previous knowledge, we entered into the research and experimentation of production using a DAW (Digital Audio Workspace). Setting up a small bedroom studio, mic/keyboard/computer allowed us to create expansive audio soundscapes, cinematic builds, and the use of hundreds of digital instruments beyond our wildest dreams.
Throughout the rest of the pandemic, we wrote about current events, love, loss, grief, beauty, memories, etc. We have yet to nail down a genre that feels fitting as we are inspired daily by many genres/artists and tend to reach for new sounds with every piece we compose. We aim to haunt and create the deep pit nostalgia of a fever dream, continue to call to light hardship/unhealthy patterns, and heal our inner selves. As with any art, we want to evoke emotion and healing for our listeners, whether with a slow, sorrowful song or a cathartic rhythmic dance feeling.
Our name “embalmingEva” is a mix of meanings- by definition, Eva means life, and to embalm is, of course, to preserve. We use our music to capture and preserve our joy and what has made us the people we are today. Because of our experiences early on with grief, the fear of death without this evidence to pass on was all-consuming. We feel fortunate to live in an era where this is infinitely possible. Being a young experimental duo that wants to poke at raw topics, dig into our dark aesthetic, and push the boundaries of what kind of performance happens locally, we were still determining how we would be received in a culture focused on men & live guitar. (We love and honor their place immensely) but can be intimidating to shake up.
So far, we have been accepted with open arms and intense love/praise and have felt very seen even when we make some viewers uncomfortable. We have released 5 singles & a 3 song dark dance EP so far and have our first album in the works now. We have also collaborated with local artists to create several music videos. We have performed live many times in 2023/24, encouraging our audience to show up authentically in ultimate self-expression, which has exceeded our expectations every time. In pursuit of constant change, we recently tried something on stage we had never done before; we played intuitively together while singing and were on the same grand piano, playing piano. We choreograph hypnotic, synchronized movement to capture our viewers and carefully pick highly decorated outfits with exciting silhouettes, eye-catching metallic elements, and often tiny attachable birds. Not a day goes by that we aren’t highly grateful for our 15 years of intense friendship, growth, and bonding. We pour that into our work and have faced fears we never imagined years ago. We advocate for self-preservation, self-love, boundaries, queer and trans rights, and community building and strive to inspire other young self-taught artists to try anything their hearts desire.
It wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
The struggles we have faced have been both internal and external. Between our experiences with family dysfunction, death, loss, & change in childhood and our teen years being riddled with self-doubt and more loss, it has been an uphill journey. However, we have loved converting these feelings into capsules of inspiration to fuel our self-expression fire.
Let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
We are both lifelong piano players, relishing in the dramatic bellowing effect of low notes and the sustain pedal. We can’t remember a time in our lives when we weren’t sung to or singing. We have been fortunate to have been exposed to music since the womb and are sure this has something to do with how enamored by music we feel. We specialize in cinematic soundscapes, world-building, and an immersive experience approach. We are focusing on the visual impact of our performance and media as much as our sound and lyricism. We are known for our surprising personality dichotomies; we have a very dark, moody aesthetic, and our lyrics follow that theme, but in actuality, we are timid and silly. We are filling our days with inside jokes, made-up words, physical comedy, and introverted patterns. While filling all of our free time with writing and production we both work together full time at a small local business to support our music endeavors.
What are your plans for the future?
We look forward to expanding what is publicly available from us! Our first album is in the works, and several music videos are in various states of completion. We lose sleep when working on several projects at once because of the overwhelming outpouring of ideas and focus and being swept up in our craft, which is constant. Our continual goal is learning to strip things down, remind ourselves we are human, and land in a healthy spot with our perfectionism. We look forward to our lives’ joys and are so thankful we can feel this way, as it is a great privilege.
Contact Info:
- Website: embalmingeva.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/embalmingeva/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@embalmingEva?app=desktop
- Other: https://open.spotify.com/artist/64pAAC2AxxqymZMZiHItuA
Image Credits
Catherine Karakas & Marcel Hones from the music video shoot RBMK
