Song Exploder - Julia Holter - Horns Surrounding Me

Episode Date: October 29, 2014

Julia Holter studied composition, and in the song Horns Surrounding Me, she arranges not only acoustic and electronic instruments, but also layers of ambient field recordings and background noise. The song was released in 2013 on her acclaimed album Loud City Song. In this episode, Julia deconstructs the recording, and talks about what she did to evoke a feeling of fear in both the music and the way she sang, changing her voice on different parts of the song to create character and texture.

You're listening to Song Exploder, where musicians take apart their songs, and piece by piece, tell the story of how they were made. I'm Rishi K. Hirwe. Julia Holter studied composition, and in the song, Horns Surrounding Me, she arranges not only acoustic and electronic instruments, but also layers of ambient field recordings and background noise. The song was released in 2013 on her acclaimed album, Loud City Song. In this episode, Julia deconstructs the recording and talks about what she did to evoke a feeling of fear in both the music and the way she sang, changing her voice on different parts of the song to create character and texture. My name is Julia Holter. I wrote Horn Surrounding Me in 2010.

It was sort of like a soft piano song that I used, these lyrics that I found. It wasn't my writing. It was Pushkin. We played this song that had no name for like a year and a half live. and it had these other lyrics, but then I decided to put my own lyrics to it, and that was what horn surrounding me became. This song is about being kind of bombarded

by noise and sound and, like, needing to find one's own inner piece, I guess. So I just think of, like, the loudness of brass, and I thought that something abrasive like that was what I wanted. And I was trying to almost imagining, like, originally my vision was like a marching band chasing someone chasing you and not letting you hear your own voice or something which to me is really terrifying actually so I recall the words of lovers sadly in the sun somehow was trying to be a man in this song I think I just was trying to be like a scared man like how would a scared man sing I don't know like

A landing song I don't even know how to sing Like a scared woman Except I would maybe be kind of quiet And I think I was trying to kind of be like Brian Ferry for this song And that was my closest Comparison

I've probated Spare for days I troll downtown The red light plays Jump on bubble What's in store Love is the drug And I need to score

So I guess trying to evoke the fear of a man was kind of fun. So we actually staged a chase on the top of a building. And I was just like, you know, breathing and like doing what I needed to do for the song and just running. I was getting really literal with that, I guess. I just love atmosphere a lot and cinematic kind of moments. There's also like sort of a field recording that I did once. That's a piece in of itself of my friend running around with a recorder around my apartment building and then me playing harmonium in my room.

It's a song I made for fun one day that's inside of horns surrounding me. I started making field recordings when I was in college and I was totally confused about music because I kind of hated everything I wrote and I was doing composition as my major. so it was like the pressure was on to be like a good composer and I just like couldn't stand anything I was doing and I wasn't singing at all at the time or anything and I think it was attractive to me because I was trying to find my voice as they say I was interested in the environment much more than just like musical concepts I'll frequently like record something that just seems really exciting to me both

in terms of like the sound source like if it's like birds making crazy sounds but also like the way that they're echoing in the structures and like the spatial aspects of it. I like to have this element of noise there a lot and that you just get noise in a field recording and that's just the noise of a room, noise of a space. And that's why it takes forever. Like this recording session took like two weeks and then it was like months and months and months of arranging these field recordings and like making sure it just all blends. And that takes like a long time.

then a lot of the song is just a drone if you really get down to the harmonic structure but within that I play chords and that's that moment of a g natural and then it's like really scary the horn part it's a really funny combination of a trombone that was recorded in mexico This midi-ish sounding horn. Yeah, I have a sax sound on my norde. That's pretty great, actually. I ended up arranging parts for everyone to play, and we had to scale back the acoustic things I'd arranged. Like, I wrote out everything,

and a lot of it we just used electronics for in the end. I just was asking for that more than the acoustic elements that I had kind of thought would work. It's interesting that I sing differently when I perform than when I record. When I perform live, I actually tend to really push my voice a lot. I never thought anyone would ever hear this. It's supposed to be embedded in the song. I couldn't get a real opera singer to come in, so I just did that.

You just add reverb. When you play a song for a really long time live, it's really hard to record it because recording is an opportunity to really do something magical that you can't do when performing. And now here's Horns Surrounding Me by Julia Holter in its entirety. For more information on Julia Holter, visit songexploader.net, where you'll find a link to buy Horns Surrounding Me. I have a new album of my own coming out on April 24th. It's been about 15 years since I last put out a full length, and this is the first one that'll be out under my own name, Rishikesh, Her Way. I started making Song Exploder

when I was feeling lost in my own music career. And then for over a decade, I've gotten to have these incredible conversations about the process of making music talking to other artists, and it made me completely rethink my relationship to music and my way of writing songs. And this album is the product of all of that.

It features contributions from some of my favorite artists, including some folks that you may have heard on this podcast, like Iron and Wine, Kevin Morby, Vagabond, Fenlily, and the producer Phil Weinner, rope. I'm going to be on tour playing in cities across the U.S. starting in April, and I'm trying to bring the spirit of the podcast with me. So every show that I'm playing will begin with a conversation about the album with a different amazing guest moderator in each city, like Adam Scott, Samin Nasrat,

Jason Manzuchas, Josh Molina, Minjin Lee, Ken Jennings, John Roderick, Austin Cleon, and more. They're all going to be my conversation partners on stage, and then I'll play with my band. The album is called In the Last Hour of Light, and the first couple songs are out now. You can listen to the music and get tickets for the shows on my website, rishikash.co. Or just go to songexploder.net slash live. That's songexploder.net slash live. Thanks. You can find all the past and future episodes of SongExploder at songexploder.net

or on iTunes, Stitcher, or wherever you download podcasts. Find the show on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram at Song Exploder. Song Exploder is a proud member of Radiotopia from PRX, a curated network of extraordinary, story-driven shows. Learn more at Radiotopia.fm. My name is Rishi Kesh Hereway. Thanks for listening.