Julia Holter
Classical and not-so-classical-at-all: Julia Holter’s music lies at a crossroads similar to the one where artists like Arthur Russell or Laurie Anderson reside. It’s the sound of an artist who has clearly been trained – in this case at Cal Arts with Michael Pisaro and in India singing with harmonium under guru Pashupatinath Mishra – and one that has no problem forgetting everything previously learned, if needed.
Holter’s songwriting stems from a mythological reverence of that which is incomprehensibly beautiful. Her 2007 EP Eating the Stars was a first attempt at musically transcribing this feeling, and her 2011 debut album Tragedy embraced similar strains of shimmer. But it was on 2012’s Ekstasis where everything came together. Critically beloved, it’s the culmination of her young career, a record whose motivating character was best described by Holter herself: Ekstasis reflects, she says, “a desire to get outside of my body and find what I can’t define.”
In her 2013 Red Bull Music Academy lecture, Holter talked about what she learned while attending the University of Michigan, her creative process, recording Ekstasis, and more.
Hosted by (music: Julia Holter – “Marienbad” / applause) Todd L. Burns So, Julia Holter – we don’t necessarily have to clap again, but thank you very much for being with us today. We really appreciate it. You were playing live last night in a context that you don’t normally play in. You were improvising with Thundercat and... Julia Holter Dosh. Todd L. Burns Dosh, right? Julia Holter ‘Dum du dum dum’. Yeah, yes. Todd L. Burns How did it go? Julia Holter It was really cool. It was very, very awkward for me. [laughs] I mean, I
definitely had all these thoughts afterward about what I wish I had done, and
I am kind of a control freak about things so I am not used to with coming up
the stuff on the spot. But it was definitely like a learning experience. Like,
listening is so important and after three minutes, I got into it. But it’s so
hard to jump in when you are not used to being a really good listener. Todd L. Burns I still think five minutes is pretty short time. Julia Holter Five minutes is really awkward for even great people who do it all the time. I
think it’s really hard. I thought this show is really, really interesting. I
had a lot of fun afterward. I felt very, very weird performing, though. I was
not having fun admittedly at first. I felt like I was like in a cage, I felt
terrible, actually. But Thundercat was doing just this cool atonal bass thing
and it was really spare, and I had just this perception of what might happen and
it was very different, and it’s very important to always not expect anything
in these situations. Do not expect because you have heard their music and you
think it may be a certain way... So, it was actually very cool and I should have
just got my hands off the keyboard and just started making up some stuff,
singing or something, because I think that’s what I do better with improvising. Just coming up with vocal stuff. So I just went into my zone immediately, but I should have just let it... Like, listened and... Todd L. Burns This is one of the first times you improvised, live? Julia Holter Yes, because I do lot of different type performing. Like, I don’t always
perform my songs. But I never really improvise with no concepts or no nothing at all, with people I don’t know. That doesn’t ever happen, really. I perform people’s music, like other composers’ music, sometimes, and I have written piece of music in front of me. Todd L. Burns That usually helps. Julia Holter Yeah, well, it’s just a different thing. Todd L. Burns Composers. What composers you prefer? Julia Holter Like, my friends. Todd L. Burns OK. Julia Holter I mean, I used to play piano, like classical music but now I play some friends of mine. I have this friend Mark, so I play his music a lot on piano or whatever. You can do a lot of different things with his music. It’s not all
for piano, but... Todd L. Burns What instruments do you play, then, altogether? Julia Holter I just play keyboards. Todd L. Burns OK. Julia Holter I mean, we all can play stones, like, stones or rocks or hit things. [laughs] Todd L. Burns You played cello before that, right? Julia Holter No, I don’t play cello. That’s a lie that’s on the Internet or something. I play cello on the record, though. I don’t know how to play cello but it’s on the record anyway, [laughs] because I just I took a cello in my hands and
recorded myself. But I just don’t actually know... Todd L. Burns Why did you want that sound? Julia Holter I just really like the cello. Todd L. Burns What about it? Julia Holter It’s a deep sound. It’s full. It’s rich and very beautiful. Everyone thinks that, right? It’s everyone’s favorite instrument, right? It’s so resonant and cool. Todd L. Burns It’s my favourite... Julia Holter Is it? Todd L. Burns ...stringed instrument, for sure. Julia Holter See? Todd L. Burns You said you grew up a little bit playing some classical piano. Julia Holter Yeah. Todd L. Burns And when did you start doing that? Julia Holter When I was eight, I started. Todd L. Burns And when did you stop? Julia Holter After college I stopped studying. Throughout college I had a piano teacher, but I was never really good. I could play, I was competent, but I wasn’t going to be a virtuoso classical pianist, at all. But I really love playing classical piano. It’s fun for me, I just didn’t take it super seriously. Todd L. Burns And was it your parents that were bringing you to the piano or was it something that you wanted to do? Julia Holter No, I just wanted to play. Todd L. Burns Your parents are musical? Julia Holter Well, my dad plays guitar. Todd L. Burns What kind of? Julia Holter He plays like folk, country, kind of inspired by Bob Dylan... [laughs] Todd L. Burns Why do laugh when you say that? Julia Holter No, I don’t know. Well, as a kid he got inspired by Elvis. He started as a kid,
and then my grandpa actually taught him a little, but my dad wanted to just play by ear, and my grandpa tried to teach him how to read. He didn’t want to. He just wanted to play Elvis songs. My grandpa played country & western music and he actually played the slide steel, or side lap steel. I always
forget what it’s called, but it’s the thing that’s really cool; the thing on
the table and you play it with the pedals. And he makes really great music, actually. He plays country, it’s more like country rock, alt-country rock music or something. It’s way different than my music. It’s really good,
though. Todd L. Burns Was there a lot of this alt-country rock in the household then growing up, your
dad, being played? Was your dad forcing alt- songs on you? Julia Holter No, no, no, not really, ‘cause my mom would kind of control things. So, a lot
of Billie Holliday, which is great. I actually hated all the music they played growing up, but then, I love it now, like Steely Dan, Billie Holliday... I don’t know, just really good variations of pop music. Todd L. Burns Why did you hate it? Julia Holter I don’t know, ‘cause it’s my parents that’s playing it, I guess. Todd L. Burns Yeah, of course. Was Roxy Music one of those things? Julia Holter They played Roxy Music too. Todd L. Burns And now you love Roxy Music? Julia Holter Now I love it, yeah. Todd L. Burns I saw you on Twitter saying you were doing your taxes but you couldn’t do them
anymore listening to Roxy Music, you were miscalculating and stuff. Julia Holter I couldn’t. It was like late late Roxy Music. Like sensual, paradise love-affair music, and I couldn’t do numbers. Todd L. Burns [laughs] Well, let’s play one of the songs you used to hate and now perhaps like. This is “Ladytron.” (music: Roxy Music – “Ladytron”) Todd L. Burns So, you can kind of hear a guy who’ll be lecturing here tomorrow, Brian Eno, in that little bit,
I think. Is that what turned you around? Julia Holter It’s cool he’s coming here. What? Todd L. Burns Is that what turned you around on this group? Like, hearing some electronic textures in it? Julia Holter Actually, I really like Brian Ferry as a performer and a vocalist. I really
like Brian Eno too, and I listen to Brian Eno music, too, but I like those synth sounds
too. Yeah, it’s possible that the combination is pretty intoxicating, too, but
I really like Brian Ferry as a performer. That’s what I think of, that sort
romantic... it’s like really interesting to me. Todd L. Burns Romantic? Julia Holter He’s like a total romantic figure. It’s all about this image of him, but his vocals are so... I just think they’re very romantic. Todd L. Burns So you end up going to college at Michigan, right? And you’re still studying piano while you were there? Julia Holter Yeah, I was doing composition there. Todd L. Burns OK, and you were also working at the college radio station while you were there? Julia Holter Yeah. Todd L. Burns Which it seems like there were some people around there which were quite influential, just working at the radio station. Julia Holter Yeah, well, I was in music school and it was really conservative. And I didn’t really know what I wanted to do with music, and I just have so many different things that I listen to and a lot of people in the school... It was focused primarily on, I guess, modern composition, meaning music that is coming out of classical tradition. And we were kind of expected to write music that even... Even John Cage was very experimental to them, and John Cage had been around forever, but that was still totally crazy to them. So it was all music that had this very traditional idea of development, and it just felt confining
to me. So it definitely was great when I found a radio station where people had this freeform radio set where you could play whatever. I mean, that’s every college radio station has this. [gestures to audience] I’m sure you guys are involved. Todd L. Burns In the United States. Julia Holter Yeah, right. In the United States. And it’s just really good to be able to get to just try different sound stuff, and just go into whatever section of the music library and pull out something. I liked that. Todd L. Burns What were some of the things that you just discovered while you were there that were particularly [interesting to you]? Julia Holter I can’t remember specifically a particular artist. It’s weird. I mean, let’s
see... Todd L. Burns I suppose, just the idea of going to school with all these people who are only into classical music all day, and going to this other place, where it’s completely free was probably just liberating in and of itself. Julia Holter Yeah, it was just really good for me. Todd L. Burns You went on to go to CalArts after that, another music-based school. But you’d
gone to school, you’d already felt like, “Eh, it’s a little constricting.” Julia Holter I took a year off and recorded a little EP. And then I went to CalArts. Todd L. Burns What was that EP like? What did it sound like? Julia Holter Well, all of it’s recorded on Audacity on my computer, so it has very little bass, because I don’t think that I even had headphones when I recorded. So I recorded everything listening through the laptop speakers, so that might give you a sense of the spectrum. [laughs] But it’s hard to describe. Actually, it’s not so different from... It’s like the songs I write [now], but much more limited in the terms of what I was using, ‘cause I was using a MiniDisc recorder or something, and then sending it into Audacity and then using the internal microphone. Todd L. Burns Sound quality is not [the best]? Julia Holter Yeah, but I tried, you know? I think I did a pretty good job with what I had. It’s called Eating The Stars. It’s actually online, you can get it. Todd L. Burns We could play a song, if you want. Julia Holter Oh, do you have it? Todd L. Burns Yeah. Julia Holter Oh, [laughs] I don’t know. Which one is it? Todd L. Burns I have all of it. [laughter] Why don’t we play a song? Julia Holter Which one? Todd L. Burns “Office Of The Dead”? Julia Holter OK. [laughs] Todd L. Burns Is there another one you [want to hear]? Julia Holter No, that’s fine. Todd L. Burns This song is about monks. Medieval monks. (music: Julia Holter – “Office of the
Dead”) Todd L. Burns So that song is about medieval monks. Julia Holter Yes. Todd L. Burns Why sing about medieval monks? Julia Holter I don’t know, that’s a good question. No one needs to, really. [laughs] But I like medieval stuff, I guess, a lot. Todd L. Burns And when you were recording this, you said you... Can you just talk about the setup a little more? You said you were recording into Audacity, but there’s a lot of... Julia Holter Yeah, I mean, if I can remember, it was so long ago. But I had a Casio – I’m sure you guys all know what kind of Casio it was because you know probably know more about keyboards than I do, even. But some old kind of toy-ish Casio keyboard that had some beats on it. [laughs] But I really liked, as I still do, to combine these keyboard sounds with acoustic sounds, so I’d record bell sounds. I had these sleigh bells that someone gave me – I still have them, this whole belt of sleigh bells – pull them off and just record the sounds of them. Really into
bells, and... Lots of vocal layers, of course, that I always do. Todd L. Burns There was like a really low voice. Was that also you? Julia Holter That was my friend Jason. Todd L. Burns OK, ‘cause I know you have, in the past, done stuff with your voice where you detuned it or whatever. Julia Holter Yeah, yeah, I do that. Todd L. Burns Can you talk a little bit about that? Why? What are you trying to do when you’re changing the timbre of your voice? Julia Holter I don’t think too much about it. I mean, I have one song where I was trying to do a duet between a man and a woman so I was just pitching my voice down. Todd L. Burns It’s that simple. Julia Holter Yeah. Or I did this cover of “Lay Lady Lay” by Bob Dylan. Pitched my voice down, [to] sound like a man. [laughs] I don’t know why I do it, it just sounds good. It’s about the way that the timbre of the voice sounds, and sometimes it sounds nice pitched down. Todd L. Burns How do you come to record something like this after spending four years at university studying classical composition? Julia Holter Yeah. Well, I think I just was excited to try stuff myself. And to sing, ‘cause I’d never really sung before. Thinking of myself as a performer came to me very naturally, in this way that I didn’t think about myself as a performer until I was like 21 or something. But I just fell into it so easily. Like, when you realise something about yourself. It was kind of same way that like, at 14 I didn’t think of myself as a creator person at all, I thought I was a practical, logical person, and then I realised that I’m not very logical and that I like to just make music of my own. I mean, all of this stuff is not what I thought I was like. I think it takes a long time to discover what you want to do. It
sometimes isn’t so obvious, at least for me. Todd L. Burns Once you recorded it, though, did it feel like, “Yeah, this is it?” Julia Holter Yeah, recording was so, like... I’m sure you guys all understand when you first record it’s like scary, but it’s not. It’s very immediate, at least for me. I’ve seen kids I’ve worked with start recording for the first time, and they just take to it. It’s just immediate, and being in school, when I was writing for musicians, everything is
really a process. Nobody wants to play your music, so you’re going to have to find
someone and force them. And then you spend like four months writing this piece, and
then you have to track down musicians and force them to play it, and it’s
really painful. Especially, when you’re a little guy and everyone’s like, they’re like these really great musicians at this school, great performers. So I always felt
like, “Oh, will you please play this crappy piece of music that I wrote for
you that I’m really trying to work on? Please?” And they weren’t mean, but
it’s just that they’re busy doing a lot of stuff, and it’s really hard to
start making music like that. Because you’re forced, like I didn’t really make
music until I applied to school. I just wrote some music, and then applied. It
wasn’t like I’d been doing this for a long time, so I didn’t have the guts to
do it, really. So I was terrified of everyone, scared, and recording was
really nice because I could just do everything myself. Todd L. Burns Why did you go...? Julia Holter So... Todd L. Burns Sorry, go ahead. Julia Holter I just think this point in my [life] is all me doing everything. And since then I’ve incorporated a lot of the stuff I did do, in composition, working with musicians. I just finished recording a record right before I came here. Well, I mean, I finished the record completely, actually. And it’s mastered and everything, and it’s nice to like work with people, now. So I’m kind of
combining these worlds now, but at this point when I was recording I was just over it. It was just me, I’m just doing everything. And that’s what a lot of people are doing these days, and I think that’s awesome. I also think that there’s a balance, like, it’s good to work with people as well. Todd L. Burns Well, I think you probably worked alone for so long, you were like, “I’m ready to have a change.” Julia Holter Yeah, and to incorporate you writing. I wrote out arrangements for the musicians, and since incorporating the stuff I did in school, it’s not like school was useless. So there’s things that you learn that are good, and there’s... you just combine them. Todd L. Burns After you got this rush though, of, “Wow, I can do it myself, this is great!”
You go to CalArts, and you kind of [go] straight back in[to] an academic setting? Julia Holter A lot of time at CalArts I spent reading and making medieval limited manuscripts, like painting and drawing and stuff, and field recording a lot and I made this project called Cookbook. Well, that’s a long discussion, but... Todd L. Burns Well, I want to talk about it a little bit. Julia Holter It’s actually... Do you know about it? Todd L. Burns Yeah. Julia Holter OK, perfect. Because I think it’s actually a good thing to talk about. Todd L. Burns Should we play a tiny bit of it? Julia Holter Sure! Should I explain it first though? Todd L. Burns Why don’t we play it first. Julia Holter OK. Todd L. Burns Because I think it would be interesting. I’m just going to play about a minute and a half or so. (music: excerpt from Julia Holter – Cookbook) So, that’s weird without any context. [laughs] That’s a piece by someone you
mentioned earlier, or your version of a piece, I guess, by John Cage. Julia Holter Yeah, it’s actually a performance of a piece of his. So, there’s a piece that’s called “Circus On” by John Cage. And it’s like, the instructions are... I’m going to try to sum this up. It’s just a text, and it’s instructing you to do something, which is to make a recording, that is basically an oral
transcription of a book. And so the way that you make this transcription, basically turning a book into sound. So the way that you do this is you follow these instructions, and so some of them are like, you use relevant musics. Meaning music that is relevant to the time period that the book takes place, and the place. And you use relevant sounds, so, sounds that might be heard in the book, that the book mentions. Like, if you’re passing a train, or the
trains passing you, or a plane flies over you. And it’s all put together by this... You assemble it – this was 40 minutes long – you assemble it using this system called a mesostic, which is a skeleton for this whole thing. And you place the music where it’s mentioned in the book. So it’s like this really meticulous process and it took me like a month to work on this. Todd L. Burns So you picked a cookbook from Los Angeles, from the 1920s. So all of this, I think, the reason you picked all this stuff, like you explained, is that all these things are
gonna be really interesting. You can do cooking sounds, you can go out in Los Angeles and do field recordings, 1920s – as we heard in that at the beginning – jazz snippets. Julia Holter Yeah, the area, all the addresses were all located around the University of Southern California, USC, in LA. And a little south of there, almost South Central LA. A lot of the addresses were no longer there, that were listed in the... ‘cause the addresses you’d find were advertisements for, like, “Gardening service, 44 Vermont Avenue,” or whatever. So I would go to this place, I would field record the sound. A lot of times it was a little shop or something like that. Or just on the street, I’d record the street sounds. There was a market at one point. So it was fun to focus on this one neighborhood. At one point it was a car wash, which was really awesome, and just like, see how people... and I’d try to be like, be pretending like you’re not recording them. [laughs] It was kind of cool. Todd L. Burns So where do you put the enormous Zoom recorder? In a bag? Julia Holter I didn’t have a Zoom at the time, I had a MiniDisc. Todd L. Burns OK. That’s a little bit easier to conceal. Julia Holter Yeah, and then I’d just record myself playing some of the relevant musics. I mean, I don’t even know if this makes sense. It’s kind of hard to explain this project. Todd L. Burns I think we did alright. You can find it somewhere, on the Internet. Julia Holter Mesostics, let me just say; mesostics
are really cool. The mesostic is basically this poem that you use to build this whole piece off of, and it’s like an acrostic – I don’t know if you guys know what an acrostic is, it’s like a poem that goes down, but it’s “meso,” like “middle,” so it’s all in the middle. Todd L. Burns Acrostic is, you use the beginning of every line... Julia Holter I’m gonna say I’m not going to try to explain it in words, but look it up because it really inspired me when I was in college and miserable and looking for inspiration. It’s something John Cage I think kind of invented, but it might have been invented a little before him, too. Todd L. Burns Why weren’t you inspired by CalArts? Julia Holter Why wasn’t I? Todd L. Burns I mean, what was the context? Julia Holter Or by Michigan? I was pretty inspired at CalArts. Todd L. Burns You said, but before the Cage piece you said you were a little bit miserable. Julia Holter Oh, no, I was at Michigan. I learned about John Cage at Michigan, and I built on it. It wasn’t too long. It was just a year in between. Todd L. Burns OK, so tell me about CalArts. I mean, for those who don’t know what it is, it’s a school that’s... A music school? Julia Holter Yeah, it’s an art school. There’s a lot of artists and musicians and dancers. Todd L. Burns And you were doing medieval illuminated manuscripts. [laughs] Julia Holter I was being like a loner and doing my own stuff. I lived in this amazing place in the hills. ‘Cause it’s a very suburban place around CalArts, but also a lot of the students live in this area called Valverde, the city of Castaic, which is just 15 minutes away. It’s all nature and amazing cactus garden, like cactus stuff, like so cool, like deserty... I mean, I met a lot of people, I wasn’t a loner, but I was, I wasn’t working as a composer like writing music for other people to play too much. I did do some
pieces there, but I was just performing a lot with friends and then doing stuff like recording, this kind of stuff, and working on songs as well. Well, some of the songs that are on Ekstasis and Tragedy. Mainly Ekstasis. Todd L. Burns What makes a good field recording? You mentioned a car wash, “Oh that was great.” Julia Holter [laughs] Anything, it just takes, like... They can be different, they can be very active or they can be really like there’s not much going on and still be very interesting,
like the nuances and the small change in the environment. I made this one once where I was in a train station and it’s like fifty minutes long. It’s actually a piece of Michael Pizarro’s, who was my mentor at CalArts, who’s a friend of mine now. But if mainly the instruction is to make a field recording and then I was just playing one note on the cello every 20 minutes
or something, like a sustained note on the cello. But the cool thing about this recording is 40 minutes in, this huge train station, this humming of the air-conditioning or something stops, and it changes the environment completely. So I think what’s cool with field recordings is just that, that
there is this environment that is created. For me, it’s like a stage or something, and I have this record or this CD-R I did, that not a lot of people know, but it’s called Celebration, and it has a recording on there that kind of looks at field recordings this way, where I layer them sometimes, and then basically you can make a 20 minute recording of you in the subway or something, and then listen back and think of it as a story, and just think about how all these things happen. It’s like a stage, you know? Todd L. Burns And you’ve done these field recordings and then you build on them. Julia Holter And you can build on them. Todd L. Burns Yeah. Julia Holter In Celebration I had this recording of me in a cafe in Paris and just sent
bird songs through it. So it sounds, like suddenly for 30 seconds, there’s
birds inside the bar, even though there weren’t actually birds in the bar. You
know, you can create your own environment. Todd L. Burns And you’re doing it using a lot of field recordings on the albums that most
people know, [for example] Tragedy. Julia Holter Yeah. Todd L. Burns What is your philosophy in incorporating those things? Do you just let the recording be for the most part? Or are you trying to [change it]? Julia Holter Oh, no. Todd L. Burns Not at all? Julia Holter You mess with it. Todd L. Burns Yeah? Julia Holter For sure, I mean, if you want to. I’m not super good at processing sounds, though. It’s not like I treat them like a sample, usually so much. Sometimes, but like, I do let them be, in terms of like, I perform granular synthesis upon them or whatever. I don’t do crazy stuff like that, but I have friends that use do use like SuperCollider or whatever and do really interesting things, filtering in really specific ways. I do filter and EQ them, and sometimes, sure I do crazy things, but usually the idea is I have like a backdrop of something that happened. Like, I did this really nice one where I was running down Hollywood Boulevard, that was kind of cool. And you just hear all this stuff, I’ve used it for so many things. Um, so yeah, I reuse them a lot. Todd L. Burns And I’m not sure if it was when you were in Michigan or CalArts, but you spent a little bit of time in India. Julia Holter Yeah, very brief. It was actually right after college, or right in the middle of... I guess, 2005. Todd L. Burns What were you doing there? Julia Holter I was just there a month. This really cool professor of mine at Michigan brought us, some of the music students, to India for the first year that he did it. He’s still doing it every year. I had no experience with Hindustani music at all, but I got a harmonium there. I’m sure a lot of you guys know harmonium, but it’s like a pump organ that you can sit down with. Like a
small, little organ that you pump to play. It’s a keyboard. I had a guru there that was this really great vocalist. Todd L. Burns What did he teach you? Julia Holter He taught me simple ragas. They would start in like, what was it, Rupali, I think? It’s like a pentatonic scale that’s basically the major scale. Well, it has notes within it that are within the major scale ‘cause they know that’s like, what we know. But sort of simple ragas, I guess. He actually had to go
out of town and his son taught me after he left, and his son was way harder on me, you know? [laughs] And that was good. But we performed in the end. There’s a great guy, Dan, that I was traveling with, and some other friends and they [played] sitar, tablas and they played harmonium and we performed a raga and I sang and it was cool. [laughs] And I wrote a song there, and I think it was
one of my first songs ever, or my first song, so that was kind of important. I don’t really think I know anything about Hindustani music still, even though I know sarga, and I can do some sarga. I know the syllables, like ‘sargasararamipada’, but it’s not like I really know much about it. I was just
there a month. It takes like a lifetime of learning to do this stuff. So I always feel kind of weird when people bring up that I went to India ‘cause I was there for a month, and I didn’t... Todd L. Burns Well, you got a harmonium while you were there. Julia Holter I have a harmonium, and I still use it. But it definitely was great for me as a performer because I had never performed much. And then, after we got back, I performed in front of the entire university with my friends at the – there’s this big thing at Michigan called the Collage Concert. And I was totally fine with it. It didn’t matter, and I was like, “That’s interesting that I didn’t get scared.” Todd L. Burns So this is the moment you realised you’re a performer, I think. Julia Holter [laughs] Yeah, yeah. Todd L. Burns So lets talk about these two records that everyone seems to talk about, everyone seems to think your only albums, almost. Tell me about beginning to record them because you were recording them basically around the same time, right? Julia Holter Yeah, when I finished at school in 2009 I started recording Tragedy as a project, and for some reason started reading Greek tragedies. I’m not sure why. Todd L. Burns You graduated from college and then you started doing homework-style readings of Greek tragedies? [laughs] Julia Holter Yes. But I never had to read them – except I read Medea when I was in high
school, but I liked it. But I never had to read them ever, and it wasn’t like
a forced thing. It was just fun, so... I remember being on the beach and reading
Euripides, it was fun, and for some reason it was just inviting itself to me to make music with it, you know? Because it’s so ancient and it’s already been done a lot, like, that we’ve made art out of these stories that we all know. It just seemed natural somehow. And I liked this one, Hippolytus... I don’t even know how to say it. Todd L. Burns What spoke to you about the story, though? Obviously, these are timeless themes, but what are those themes? Julia Holter I guess, it was cool how everything was just, from the beginning, doomed. Like, you learn from the beginning that Aphrodite is going to set this plot to screw everyone over and you just know it’s going to end bad. I guess, tragedies are, that is inherently what makes a tragedy, but I don’t know if they always start this way when you know exactly what’s going to [happen]. She’s like,
“I’m going to do this and this, and then I’m going to do this, and then I’m
going to do this.” And then it’s like, “OK, that’s sad. I’m going to read this sad story
now.” And everyone’s just doomed, and I just thought it was... like, I love the character Phaedra, she’s so tormented by this love that she can’t control, and I just think that’s so
cool. And I love obstacles, so the points where Artemis, who’s this very pure
goddess, and she says to the dying Hippolytus kid, she says “I can see you but I’m not
supposed to cry because I’m a goddess so I can’t cry but I want to. I want to show you that, but I can’t.” You know like, “I want to express this thing but I can’t because I’m a goddess.” And I love that kind of problem. Like, obstacles that are so easy to make a song to. So I just kept going with it, I
was like, “OK, this works.” [laughs] Todd L. Burns So, I guess that’s a pretty easy lead in to play a song. Julia Holter Yeah. Todd L. Burns This is a version from the other album, but it’s very similar, and you’ll hear the line in it. (music: Julia Holter – “Goddess
Eyes” / applause) Todd L. Burns You talk a lot about it being instinctive decisions in the studio, but I do
think making the goddess sound very robotic, a lot of... Some thought went into that idea, or no? Julia Holter Actually, connecting it with the robot voice, I think I just now was like, “That’s cool that I did that,” ‘cause the goddess is like a robot. [laughter] Todd L. Burns Breakthroughs on the couch. Julia Holter Like, she’s part human, part robot. No, I really didn’t think about it. [laughs] I’m not kidding. But I do think that’s why I do things intuitively and believe in intuition, because there is this crazy inner logic to things like that when you make something. You do things intentionally without realising it, like, stuff makes sense, somehow. And that’s part of my, kind of like, mantra. I mean, that’s why a lot of my stuff doesn’t make sense seeming at first, but I trust myself, that there’s something going on that’s meaningful, you know? I work with nonsense a lot and I work with mystery a lot. [laughs] Todd L. Burns Yeah, I think your music, there’s an element of mystery, whether you intend for it consciously, or it just sort of pours out. [Is it] sort of important to you, to have that sort of mysticism, almost? Julia Holter I just can’t make anything with being totally clear-headed about stuff. But I also plan things out. So, with “Goddess” I think I was just messing around with my microKorg. And I played C-major, B flat-major, F-major, “This sounds good,” you know? [sings quietly] We all do this, you know? Just jamming. Doing some stuff. And then it came out, and I was like, “That sounds good.” I made it in like, a morning. But that’s not normal, that’s one of the few song that is that way. It is much simpler than most of my songs, but that’s nice. I think it’s good to do simple songs sometimes. It just comes out and it’s like, “Well, that works.” Todd L. Burns There’s three versions on this, among the two albums? Julia Holter Yeah, there’s two. Is the other one the live one? Todd L. Burns Maybe. Julia Holter Oh, OK. There’s really only two, but there’s like live versions that I’ve done. Todd L. Burns Why did you put a version of the same song? Julia Holter When I was making Tragedy, I started working on it and Matthewdavid from
Leaving Records – I’m sure some of you guys might know of his music, it’s
really great – he has a project called Leaving Records which is a label in LA that mostly does cassettes, but he wanted to put out something, so I said, “Oh, I have this
Tragedy, we’ll do that.” It took me, like, two years. [laughs] So I was already writing, working on it, and my friend Ramona from Nite Jewel sent Matt Werth, who runs RVNG here in New York, “Goddess Eyes” on a mixtape and he wanted to put it out and I was like, “Well, it’s already coming out on
Leaving,” but then I was going to work with him on a record, and so I was like, “Well, I’ll build a record off of “Goddess Eyes” that’s separate.” And so that was Ekstasis. So that’s the reason, and that’s why I made another “Goddess Eyes” just for that record. Todd L. Burns So Matt, loving it, is the reason that there’s two versions? Julia Holter Yeah, he didn’t even ask me to include it, it wasn’t like he actually cared. But I didn’t actually understand how things worked and I took everything really seriously, so I was like, “I have to have it on there! ‘Cause that’s why...” So, yeah. Todd L. Burns Tell us about the RVNG record. Julia Holter Ekstasis? Todd L. Burns Yeah, it’s quite a bit different in the way that you went about composing it. Julia Holter Well, it’s a collection of songs, really, whereas Tragedy, like my record that I just finished, is kind of overall piece in a way. It’s like an overall story behind it and
it’s very rooted in this story, or sort of. It’s like this one piece. Ekstasis is more a collection of songs, songs written over the course of three or four years, so it’s very varied in the sounds. I recorded some of
them with my MiniDisc player. Some of them, like, “Für Felix,” “Moni Mon Amie,” those are very old songs. And then some of them, “Marienbad,” I wrote a year-and-a-half ago or so. Todd L. Burns What was your set-up like? You mentioned a Casio keyboard earlier. Had that gone by the wayside? Julia Holter Well, I have a bigger Casio keyboard. [laughs] Todd L. Burns OK. Julia Holter I have a real big one from like 2000 that’s one of those stations. And that I got when I was 15, and that was great actually, because it has this cool reverb sound built in, and I use that for the drums. ‘Cause when I do drums – this is why I have a real percussionist now – when I do drums, I just play them through... like, I don’t sequence them or program them, I just play them into the computer live. That’s why everything is a little uneven all the time, ‘cause I just play it in. So a lot of Ekstasis, like the newer songs, there’s a song called “Four Gardens,” “Marienbad” that we listened to at the beginning, those songs, I wrote a lot of those using the sounds on the Casio that had this almost like a Phil Spector reverb that, kind of, what’s it called? The Wall of... Todd L. Burns The Wall of Sound. Julia Holter The Wall of Sound. I think I have that, right. So it’s like this real big reverb that I like. And that keyboard just has this built-in sound I really liked, so I used horn sounds with it, or drum sounds with it. But I also played the cello a little bit, and the harmonium a little, but mostly keyboard. microKorg... Todd L. Burns Mixing the acoustic and the digital. Julia Holter Yeah, I had a microKorg and digital piano back then. Now I have a Nord that has a synthesizer and a piano and an organ, but back then I was mainly switching between digital piano and a microKorg. Todd L. Burns I want to maybe chat about someone you’ve worked with a little bit, a woman named Linda Perhacs. Julia Holter Mhm. Todd L. Burns We’ll just play a quick song to get people familiar. (music: Linda Perhacs – “Chimacum
Rain” / applause) Todd L. Burns What did you do with her, exactly? You did a collaboration, right? Julia Holter Yeah, well, we’ve just been working together mainly in live shows. She just is finishing a record right now with two guys that I’ve been involved with a little bit, but I’ve been away a lot. But we’ve worked together for three years now. I first met her at DubLab, a radio station in LA that I’ve worked with a
lot, put together this event, and they asked me to be part of it, and I’d never heard her music but they said, “Linda Perhacs, it’s the first time she’s been performing ever.” She wrote this album, this album came out in 1970 and it was underground, and she’s been a dental hygienist for like 40 years, and had
never performed before. It’s just this incredible record, so they were doing this show where she was going to perform for the first time with all these great musicians in LA, and they asked me to do this song, and they sent it to me. It’s called “Delicious [Descant].” Did the show, heard all of her music, and was so blown away. And that’s where I met her. And I’ve been working with
her ever since, on various things. We’ve done a lot of performances together. She’s writing new music now... And some of it, like one or two of them, I worked with her a lot on, realising it... Todd L. Burns I feel like, in that song especially, the way she plays with her voice, is semi-reminiscent of what you’re doing. Julia Holter Yeah! I definitely, when I heard it, was like, “Whoa, this is so amazing.” Because she’s so... There’s definitely this mystery to her music. She’s just a real visionary, and the difference with her music now versus then is that she’s approaching it from an older, more experienced perspective, and she sounds like she has more of a global commentary. It’s like a sage speaking to the world about nature, but it’s not like hippie folk, you know? You could categorise, even Parallelograms, it’s so delicate and precise. Todd L. Burns That’s the album. Julia Holter The record is called Parallelograms, and she’s so precise, she’s a total
controlling composer person. She’s just like, “No, we need this particular
sound here. This sound,” and like, “Julia, can you get that sound from the Korg?” She’s always like, “The Korg sound.” She really likes the microKorg. “That particular sound that sounds like rain, or that sounds like drops.” And then I’ll pull it and she’ll be like, “That’s not right.” And then I’ll filter it a little, and she’ll be like, “That’s it.” She knows exactly what she
wants. And she’s got dudes that are like, “Well, we’ll tell you what... Well I know what you want.” And I kind of have to come in there and be like, “Wait!” She’s very precise and delicate and can’t be too rocking or too this or that. Sometimes, there’s been
these people that have done her music in a techno way which is so funny, ‘cause it’s like, there was some cheesy, vocoder, crazy thing that I heard at one point that someone had done with her music. And it’s like, you need to get it just right, and she just knows what she wants and it’s very particular. Todd L. Burns Had she done anything in the 40 years that she was a dental hygienist? Julia Holter Not with music. Todd L. Burns So she came back and she was like, “I know exactly what I want.” Julia Holter I think she was brought back by people who just fell in love with this record, which I think is unlike anything else that exists. And so she agreed to do it, I think she is still a very powerful poetic voice and wants to make music. So she was down to do it. Todd L. Burns Definitely. I guess, we should open it up to questions perhaps, if that’s alright. Julia Holter OK. Todd L. Burns Does anyone have anything they want to ask Julia? Audience Member Thank you for coming. What was the transition for you after you left school? Did you clear cut, “I’m just gonna find a record label,” or did you sit down and create...? Julia Holter Well, I’m from LA, and I came back to LA and I lived with my parents. And I started writing and I was really ambitious. And I found this... There was this record label Human Ear Music, that was in town and it was like a group of people making music, like, Ariel Pink was one of them. He’s obviously the most well known, but there was also like Geneva Jacuzzi, and this guy Jason Greer ran it, and I became really good friends with him and started kind of working with them, a little bit, and working with the label. So, I did get involved with a community of artists when I came to LA that were also very into doing their own thing, like your own solo project where you record everything yourself. Todd L. Burns Has that changed for a lot of musicians? I mean, Ariel Pink obviously got a band and got in the studio and made a pop record. You said you just finished a record, and you’ve [been] working with people. Do you think that’s that generation of musicians from LA are now getting to realise their ambitions, so to speak? Julia Holter Yeah, I mean, it’s interesting, because there’s an interesting question. I
think there’s some points where it’s good to do things yourself, and some times where you want to work with people, and definitely, the option to work with people is great when you have it, so, yeah. I also got a job and suffered through figuring out what, like, “what am I gonna do?” And I’m just going back to this question, because I do think it’s important, trying to balance working and making music, and it’s really hard. The best thing for me was to have as much time, obviously, that I could to make music. And so, it was tricky balancing everything. But then back to what you’re saying, it’s just about opportunities. The thing about recording yourself, though, is that you have
all this freedom to try different things and try different voices, and I think that is something that was appealing to the group of people. Todd L. Burns Can you talk a little bit about the record you just finished? Or is it too early? Julia Holter Yeah, yeah. I mean, I can talk vaguely about it. Todd L. Burns [laughs] So what can you vaguely say about it? Julia Holter Well, I was working on this starting two years ago now, a year ago maybe. And I’d written a couple of songs only, really. But I had a concept for what I wanted to do, and it was like Tragedy, all sort of based on this story, and it was kind of supposed to be a little cinematic. So then I worked with some musicians to do it. We recorded for five days in the studio, and I arranged parts for them. But then what happens, and this is the
interesting balance between me as simply a composer versus me arranging things
and having the players just play it as I’ve written it; because the truth is
that I arranged all these parts, the violin part was these crazy quintuplets
and very specific. But really, there’s so much production that goes into this. So many synths I’m going to add, effects that are going to go on to the violin part, that eventually, there’s so much arrangement that happened after the actual notated arrangement. So my friend Cole Greif-Neill, who actually mixed Ekstasis, I worked with him on producing it. So, he produced it with me and arranged it with me really, because I did arrange it all on notes, but the truth is that when we went in to mixing, that’s really part of
the composition too. Actually, I made a demo of the whole record first, in my room. So I have the whole record on demo. There’s one song that doesn’t quite have it, but pretty much everything that is on the record, I made first in my room, and then I recreated it with instruments. So, that was really interesting, I had never done that before. Todd L. Burns What was surprising about the way things have changed from their beginnings? Was there a particular track that really transformed when you got into the studio? Julia Holter Actually, it’s weird how everything ended up... There are tons of little accidents and great things that were added, but I mean, I really stuck to what my demos did, and brought them out. There were certain things that Cole would do, like he’d bring in these field recordings that I kind of gave him as
ideas, and he’d put them in and they would do these weird things to the song. They’re all subtle, it’s not heavy with field recordings, this record, but there’s sounds that happen that come in, and those create a theatrical aspect to it, like a car going down the street while you’re singing a song, or whatever. It creates an environment. Then he would just throw them in, and then it would work. So, there were things like that, you know? Todd L. Burns Sorry, we got off on a slight tangent there. Did you get your question answered? Audience Member I mean, yeah? [laughter] Todd L. Burns OK. Are there any other questions? Audience Member Hi. Julia Holter Hi. Audience Member Thank you for coming. I would like to hear a little bit about your live setup, how it is now and even if you can talk a little bit about how it’s been and how it’s gonna change towards this record you’ve just finished. Julia Holter Yeah, good question. What I decided to do when I was touring with this record Ekstasis was to have a cellist and a drummer with me. I really am a big... One of my big mantras is that performing is just so different from recording, and you can’t deny it, it’s just differet. And so, I’m not against playback at all, or anything, but I felt that for me it was best to just create the songs live as much as possible. My cellist – ‘my cellist’ [laughs] – the cellist that plays with me, Chris Votek, has a a loop pedal and stuff, and effects pedals and stuff like that, but on the whole it’s all live. Which he uses live; actually yeah, nothing’s pre-recorded, and it’s not like I’m against pre-recorded, but I really thought it’d be great to just arrange the songs for the three of us to play. They sound very different, but it was really fun to arrange the songs in this totally new way with a percussionist and a cellist. So it’s a trio, and I’m currently looking for a saxophonist or a trombonist... Todd L. Burns ...preferably in LA. Julia Holter [laughs] ...preferably in LA. And also a violinist – he played on the record, he plays with Corey Fogel, the drummer, a lot. So, yeah, like five people. Ideally, I’d have like an orchestra but, you know, that’s not gonna work yet so... [laughs] What I really want is actually like a female singer with me to bring out the vocal harmonies, so hopefully next time that’ll happen too. And a synth player. I mean, I really would like another synth player because I just play the piano, basically, so I’m not super like a synth programmer person. In my dreams I would love to do that, but for now I’m really
into just arranging the songs for what we do, and creating this new experience live that is different from the record, but is essentially... To me, every time you perform a song it’s a different performance of the composition. Like, I think of the song that’s
recorded as a composition, and it’s like... “Marienbad” is a composition, but
every time, even when it’s recorded, it’s actually a performance in a way, it’s like a different performance of it. If I perform it live, it’s a different performance every time I perform it. Todd L. Burns So you kind of think of your songs on records in a way a composer has their songs performed and different orchestras perform them. Julia Holter And it can be arranged however, yeah. Todd L. Burns Any other questions? Audience Member Hey. Julia Holter Hi. Audience Member You earlier touched on the idea of there being an element of nonsense to your music and I was curious as to whether there was any more in that that you could expand on or if you didn’t mean for it to be taken too seriously. Julia Holter Definitely, there there’s something, I guess, I could talk about. I mean, one of the things is the mesostic that I talked about earlier, this John Cage thing, there’s this interest in finding things, like, finding maybe a phrase that evades actual meaning, but there is a meaning that you find within it
anyway. So, for example, with the John Cage mesostic you end up, because there’s a chance-generated way of putting these words together, when you do this poem you’ll get phrases that don’t really make sense but then you can find this new world within that phrase. So I really love playing with that, because you still have this... but you give yourself a certain amount of room for the nonsense, so there’s insanity but then there’s the subconscious that comes through. When you do the mesostic, you actually have to add words the way you want to add them, so
there’s this certain amount of subjectivity to how you choose to put it together. And it’s not just randomness. I mean, randomness is like, not human. But with chance, and certain kinds of chance, the way you use chance in that piece, there’s like a certain number of choices you can make, as a poet. So
it’s kind of nice to let something mess with your [subconscious], you know? You could write, like, “I love you so much. You are so... You... Your cheeks are red like a rose.” Or something. But then, what if you changed the sentence around to like, “I love you so much like a rose. Your cheeks. Beautiful like...” You can just change things around, and you’ll find new ways that you wouldn’t have thought of. If there’s like a random sentence scrambler that scrambles that sentence and turns it into something else but you didn’t think of that. But then there’s something else that I do, which is phonetic
translations, where I take the sound of a song in another language and I put it into English. I did that with a song that’s like in Tibetan – oh no, this one is in Burmese – and it’s like... [sings something like “dae-sun-oo”]... or something. But then I
changed it to “days of you,” so my song is called “Days of You.” So I took
the sound of what they were saying and I turned it into English, and I never
would have thought of doing that – like, of making a song called “Days of You” – but it’s like a nice phrase, you know, and it just came out of what I was hearing. Or I did another one, like, [sings briefly] – like, they say something and it sounds like they’re saying, “Why sad song?” So I made this song called “Why Sad Song” and it turns out that the song, in Tibetan, originally translates into “sadness,” so there’s these things that happen where you avoid meaning, but meaning comes back. You know? I don’t know if this makes a lot of sense, but it’s hard to describe nonsense, right? [laughs] Audience Member Sounds almost anagramatic. Julia Holter Yeah, yeah. It’s just, to me, it’s something all artists do, but don’t necessarily embrace as much as I do. Audience Member Thanks. Julia Holter Yeah. Audience Member And also considering this aspect, you were talking about the nonsense, which comes to a sense in a way, and you made an example talking about phrases. There can be a way to do the same thing just with sounds. Have you ever experimented that? Julia Holter Just like singing sounds without words? Audience Member No, I don’t know. Todd L. Burns You mean music? Audience Member Music or sound or things that are dissonant. Field recording with other field recording that come from different background. Have you ever experimented that? Julia Holter Like, layering different field recordings? Audience Member Yeah, maybe. Or recordings from real instruments which are out of tune. Julia Holter Yeah, yeah. Audience Member Do you think it could work in a way? Julia Holter Yeah, like, putting things together that don’t go together usually? Yeah. I mean, I love doing... The harmonium, for instance, my harmonium, is almost a quarter tone sharp from other instruments. So I’m always working with sounds that don’t work well together necessarily, and trying to make it work, juxtaposing different sounds. Audience Member Thank you. Todd L. Burns Any other questions? [pause] Cool, well, Julia will be here for a little bit afterwards if you have any really specific things. But otherwise, thank you very much. Julia Holter Yeah, thanks!