1 week ago
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“The Beatles, and [Sergei] Rachmaninoff,” 19-year-old trelford answers, instantaneous and firm, to the question of his earliest influences. “Electric Light Orchestra, Grizzly Bear, [Gustav] Mahler really reinforced that I have to do this for a living.” Certainly, traces of both The Beatles and Rachmaninoff are audible in trelford’s ulcer, his debut EP, and the first with Adventure Recordings (imprint of Island Records).
The sweeping emotion of Romanticism collides with occasionally Schoenberg-style orchestrations to form delicate, wavering backdrops to standout songs like “you’re so beautiful”, and “sticks and stones”. As for The Beatles: the woozy, distorted vocals on “left out” recall sections of Magical Mystery Tour. Across the EP there’s a late 60s, White Album instinct to throw everything and the kitchen sink into a track’s production.
Trelford has described himself before as “just a motherfucker making shit”; and whilst his instinct to be modest perseveres in our conversation, it reflects too an instinct for play and enthusiasm for just following what sounds good. “I really want to try and study composition or jazz somewhere later on,” he says. As for the need to get under the hood of a song and take it apart: “Yeah, one hundred percent... “I really like harmony.”
Music poses a crucial dilemma: how do you talk about something that defies language? More to the point, how do you talk about something that deliberately replaces language, and goes somewhere that language can fail to go? What trelford most loves, he says, is that moment when music can “provoke beyond language, or any linguistic limitation.” Often, when asked about his music, he hesitates. “It’s hard to talk about,” he confesses.
In many ways, it’s hard to write about too. Trelford’s work is crammed full of contradictions, which makes it an experience to be had rather than just spoken about. On any track a listener might find the intimacy of bedroom production combined with the breadth of orchestral arrangements. The well-worn discussions of teenage isolation and romance, colliding with the sharpness of a particularly astute lyric or guitar riff. It is so remarkable that the easiest way to explain it is simply to put it on and listen.
“sticks and stones” comes halfway through ulcer and expresses most viscerally the experiences at the heart of the EP’s composition. “I hate to pull out the victim card, like, instantly, but it’s just the truth… I was very disliked at school,” trelford shares. “People used to spread rumours about me, it got very bad. It was a very isolating point in my life, and I think also it’s all about […] psychological mind games.”
The track, specifically, is “not the most metaphorical. It’s quite autobiographical. I was full of hate and anger and rage at that point in my life, and I think I had to write about that. It’s meant to aid people who might be going through a similar situation. I am trying to get away from it. I’m very forward in my music, and it’s very personal, but I wasn’t aware of the price that you have to pay later on for making it super personal.”
It’s a hard place to be in, because the song is so good. Matter-of-fact lyrics sung over a simple pairing of acoustic and electric guitars, before the pre-chorus builds and explodes into harmony: strings, a full band. The rest of the song trickles by into weirder and noisier soundscapes, that still holds a feeling of sadness and profound pain at its centre. All of trelford’s music is self-produced, and it’s easy to imagine him, like many great artists, sitting with that emotion alone. “I make music for myself,” he says. “But it’s nice if it can help someone.”
That said, there’s a sense that he is perpetually expanding, both sonically and as an artist – and that he relishes it. His experimentation has developed significantly since his first ever release, 2022’s self-distributed care home party, and he’s particularly excited to continue working on classically inspired material, music that’s “a lot more intricate, those are the colours I’m searching for now.”
In the meantime, there’s a lot to be getting on with: a spate of gigs in early 2026, among them Best Fit’s Five Day Forecast at The Lexington in London. He’s excited for those, and to keep pushing the limits of what he can do with live performance. But what’s otherwise audible is a relentless drive to look forward, to explore more, to do something new. ulcer, though it serves as an apt introduction to trelford’s work, “isn’t entirely representative of what I’m making at the moment... the new stuff, that’s gonna be cool.” Like all the best artists, he’s already one step ahead.
English (US) · 