“Weird Trash Gaze Elevator Music”: Elnuh on Describing Her Sound, Her New Tour and Transforming Her Emotions Into Music
It’s October and temperatures have finally cooled down to a high of 90 degrees in San Antonio. There is a slightly perceptible breeze tickling the tall grass at Pearsall Park. Above, the sky cracks with the thunderous noise of military jet planes cutting through the orange and violet hues of the sunset transmuting into night. Below, you can hear the noise of wheels gliding on concrete and decks slamming on coping from the skatepark.
Recounting the story of her first drop-in at the smaller half-pipe and how she broke her arm on two separate occasions, musician and avid roller skater, Elena Lopez laughs and looks down every so often at the skaters wondering if she could make out any familiar faces.
By the end of the month, Lopez (better known by her stage name, Elnuh) won’t be skating in this town much. This October she will embark on a two-week tour across four states, her first since 2020.
Her demeanor is refreshingly simple and that translates beautifully to her music. Let’s Go Skating, her first EP released in 2016, is a collection of songs recounting heartbreak, the fatuous nature of social media, as well as hope, love, and her fondness for roller skating. Her last EP, Happy Little Demo X3, was released at the beginning of the pandemic. With lyrics such as, “would you have noticed when I cried a thousand times” it is very evident that her subjects matured over time, growing sweetly forlorn and melancholic.
“Life is crazy. I definitely think it molds you based on what you go through,” Lopez said while turning towards the sky. “And if you're an artist, whatever medium it may be -music or something tangible, digital, anything - you’re still making something that comes from an emotional place. And when shit happens, it changes who you are and then kind of naturally your creative mind changes.
Despite the despondency in her lyrics, there is still a jovial wondrous affinity in her harmonies.
Elnuh’s sound is a mixture of sweet, satiny vocals and hazy, ethereal guitar progressions, on customized tunings, most often handcrafted from the comfort of her bed. The strums of Nick Drake and classical piano music have inspired her songs, which are driven more by feeling than by technicalities. She dotingly drafts songs on her childhood guitar, which she bashfully admits has only the three bottom strings.
Unsure of how to categorize her genuine but simple approach to music, Elnuh grapples with labels and categorizing her band’s musical genre.
“I call it trash gaze because it was a joke at one point,” she says.“Someone at one point in time said ‘yeah this sounds like weird elevator music’ and I was like, `hmm interesting. Weird trash gaze elevator music.’”
Whatever it is that you’d like to call it, it took Lopez a lifetime to hone in on it. “What it is now is what it was always supposed to be,” she said.
Lopez has been playing piano from the age of three, and was classically trained in the instrument well into her adolescence. To aid her learning, she’d play alongside TV show songs in hopes of one day being able to write film scores. Later on she’d teach herself to play guitar.
Growing up in the church was where she learned to play with other people. At 15, she joined her first band, Invision Love, and played in venues, many of which are now extinct - remember The Ten Eleven, Imagine Books & Records, and Harmony Sweet in New Braunfels? From there she went on to find and expand her community, while realizing her ambitions lied in experimenting with her own sounds. She doodled in the art of songwriting with her childhood best friend accompanying her on violin and her brother on bass, until gaining the confidence to start her first band, Octahedron.
Now, nearly 10 years later, through several variations of sound and with a few bands under her belt, Lopez believes she’s finally met her musical soulmates - her current bandmates Daniel Puente on drums and Luke Mitchell on bass.
“They are geniuses in themselves and really know how music works.”
Just a few months ago, the trio wrote a song from scratch and performed it some ten hours later that night at Paper Tiger, after doing a Studio E livestream. “It’s like the equivalent of love at first sight musically. Like music making sense of love at first sight. That’s why now it feels so right like how it always should have been.”
She credits Puente and Mitchell for her move back to Texas. “Even if I wasn’t able to make music with them, they’re still some of my best friends.”
Moving away from San Antonio twice, since the beginning of the pandemic, Lopez went through a bout of creative inactivity and mental roadblocks where she was roller skating more than playing music.
“I went through a period where I wasn't motivated at all. I probably didn't touch any instruments, seriously touch the instruments for a long while and then I realized the more I grow apart from it, the more it feels a lot worse.”
But Lopez needed a vessel to share her experiences, write new music and play shows again.
“Truly, truly, just the craziest things have happened in life, definitely over the past few years and those experiences are quite literally what have molded every ounce of me. All of the good, all of the bad and all of the in between. And so those experiences, creating the reaction and how I feel coming out of those things is what kept me creative.”
Elnuh’s tour kicks off at The Green Room on Oct. 14. Other acts joining her will be local Synth-punk band Sex Mex, psychedelic mavens True Indigo, San Marcos natives Wezmer, and John Charlie’s Heavy Love. From then on she will leave on a two week journey to a few more Texas cities, followed by Kansas, Colorado and New Mexico.
“I don't think I could handle not playing outside of Texas. It has a really special place in my heart to play music outside of Texas and just travel whenever,” Lopez said. “I’m excited for all the musicians we’re going to meet and all the people and the venues. In the past it’s been something nice and sweet that I value a lot and I’m excited about what it’s going to look like now after all this time.”
By now the sun was completely set. The sky a bright teal fading into black. The buzzing of mosquitoes and the last of the summer cicadas crescendo as we trek down the hill. She hints at new music, possibly a full length LP, dropping within the next few weeks, as well as more interstate shows in November. Approaching the skatepark, Lopez averts her gaze to two young men flashing their cell phone lights to a small garden snake wriggling across the cement path. Lopez bends down and unsuccessfully tries to pick it up as they ask her if she’ll be skating today. As we part ways she turns and says, “How do they know I skate?”
You can check out Elnuh’s music on Bandcamp, Spotify, Soundcloud, or Apple Music
Elnuh’s Local Music Recommendations:
“Delenda. I have never seen anyone use the entire space of a venue, not just the stage, not just the room but she will go and sit by people and get in their personal space and smile at them or hug them. It is so cool. That’s definitely a favorite, for me.
I remember being 14, 15 in the corner like, right after school and just seeing Brandon Cunningham at Ten Eleven.
Eye of the Day, I feel is extremely underrated, they’re so good, they sound unreal.
Earth.mp3, D'vonna will always have a special place in my heart.
Bella (Grocery Bag, Dream Place) she was in a punk band and then an indie band and then a garage band just doing badass things, just ripping.
Marc Smith (Mockingbird Express) has always been a good friend, I have always valued that relationship, like the wisdom. That’s a musician that I just value in San Antonio, I can say a lot about him.”