Project Description

Interview with
JAMES JOSEPH
From
HOLDING ABSENCE

Interviewer: Laura Hughes

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If you haven’t heard the name Holding Absence then it’s time that you should. If you are a fan of Glass Tides, Being As An Ocean, and Dayseeker, then Holding Absence will be your new favourite band. With their self-titled debut album which was released last year, shows them breaking through the scene and platform of their own. 

Holding Absence is Welsh Post-Rock quartet, whose music will capture your heart and soul, have released two brand new singles ‘Birdcage’ and ‘Gravity’ that shows this band reaching new heights and expanding upon their songwriting, opening themselves up to their fan in a new breathtaking manner. 

I got the opportunity to talk to Bassist James Joseph about their new singles, and the hurdles that they have to face as being a band in quarantine.

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Buy/Stream “Gravity” HERE

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What is your earliest memory of music?
I have two, so the first one was the first CD I ever got was this comic relief CD, it was this British boyband called Boyzone, doing a cover of “When The Going Gets Tough”. It was a bop. I remember it was a pound in Tesco, and my mum let me buy it because I really liked it; I think I was five years old at the time. The second one, I was ten years old, School of Rock movie with Jack Black, that made me what to play the guitar so badly, I managed to find one of those cheap classic guitars that everybody has in their house, and I remember pausing the DVD, trying to see their fingers, trying to figure out what they were doing, and try to recreate it, and the rest is history. 

What album had the biggest impact on you?
Probably an album I started listening to when I was fifteen years old. It was by a band called Stick To Your Guns, and the album was called Diamond, I say that had the biggest effect on me because the first political charged album that I ever listened to, it was sort of the gateway for me to getting into punk and hardcore music. Through that, I then listened to that band influences, and became obsessed with discovering new bands and inspired the bands that I like.

Do you think those influences impacted you when you first started writing music?
Yes, for sure. The sound of our band is a mixture of everybody’s own personal influences, like someone in the band might love Radiohead, or someone in the band might love Fall Out Boy, or someone in the band might love anything really. We pick a lot of influences for our band. When we’re writing and we’re like we want to the next part to go like this, then someone will be like “oh I know a song that does that”, we can look at that and see how they managed to do it. 

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What was it like releasing your debut album? What were you expecting versus what the outcome was?
The first album feels like such a big deal, we were definitely like this is amazing, we’re going to be the biggest band in the world after this. We worked so hard on it, that just comes with being young and being like we’ve never had to put an album out before, and none of us had ever really had to work that hard for something. It did really well, but I don’t think it did as well as we thought it was going to, apparently, it did well, we’re further in our career than some bands who are on album three, so complaints here. I would even go as far to say that my musical taste has changed, I wouldn’t listen to that album personally anymore, but I still have a real soft spot in my heart for it, based on what that album meant to me, and all the memories that went along with making it.

Despite the struggles of writing your first album, you managed to push it out. Was that a huge learning curb for you when it came towards songwriting?
You have to speak to musicians like children, you have to give them a reason for everything. If you didn’t like someone’s idea, you have to be prepared to have a reason why, otherwise it always ends in an argument, and everyone gets bummed out, and then you have to start again the next day. It’s a case of that, and also a case of compromise. We have been a band for five years now, so the sound has changed a little bit over the five years. It sort of changed in the way in different in how I would do it personally, but I managed to combat that by having a side project, I have another band where I sing and play the guitar, and that allows me to be more chill when it comes to Holding Absence because I can fine put my personal preferences aside, and do what’s best for Holding Absence. The biggest learning curb is compromise, and whether that takes you to have another project to do that, or whether it takes being able to meet in the middle.

Where did the concept for your single ‘Gravity’ come from?
So we wrote ‘Gravity’, it was a really weird time span, it was late last year when we found out that we weren’t able to go to America, it was going to be out first American tour, and out visas got denied, we were so upset, we found out a week before that we weren’t be able to go. At the time, our plan was we were going to America for about six weeks, then we suddenly find out that we have no plans and six weeks of nothing. So we’re like you know what, what we can do is give ourselves a day or two to be bummed out, stay in bed and be upset, and then we were like you know what, let’s get together and write a song. We ended up writing ‘Gravity’, which was the light at the end of the tunnel. It was sort of subconsciously reflective of the time of just being in a rut, and thinking that the world is going to shit. It ended up being a great thing for the band, it meant that we’re now able to release two more songs in a time where people really want to listen to music. We released ‘Gravity’ and ‘Birdcage’ in the last month or so, and it has gone really well with the people who support us. It means that we also have more time to work on a follow-up record. 

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What made you decided to take a more ‘pop’ approach towards your latest single ‘Birdcage’?
Truthfully, if we didn’t have ‘Gravity’ to show more of the heavier forefront of our band, I don’t think ‘Birdcage’ would turn out like it did. Without ‘Gravity’, ‘Birdcage’ on its own would seem too poppy. The last thing we want, we’re all into heavier music, is for people think that we’re changing. We definitely want to change throughout our career, but we didn’t want anyone to think that we suddenly changed overnight. The main thing that made us go with ‘Birdcage’ because we were happy with a song that we could do typically more poppy vocals, the chorus could be like a Panic! At The Disco chorus, and we were like you know what it won’t hurt, and if anyone thinks we’ve changed we can be like listen to the other side of the record, listen to ‘Gravity’, we’re still the same band it’s just one of our many songs. 

What was it like working with Romesh with this single, did it change your perspective on songwriting?
The song was already written before we approached Romesh. We had a fair bit of time before Romesh was able to fit us into his schedule. It didn’t really affect the songwriting a lot, however, Romesh is really good at vocal production. He definitely managed to make Lucas sound the best he ever sounded in terms of what our band has recorded so far. It was a funny old experience because, we went in expecting him to show us all these crazy techniques, but someone like Romesh is just like someone who knows what he is doing because he has done it for so long, he has got everything set up and like ‘we’re doing this way’ and ‘we’re doing this’, so it was probably the least fun I’ve had in the studio, but it came out well, so it was a weird one. It came out well so I’m not going to argue with the guy he knows what he’s doing. 

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During this time of isolation, has it changed how you see the industry? How you view live shows? Has it made you think of new ideas of how to be a band during this time of isolation?
It’s definitely a hard time to be a band, the biggest issue for a band is that you always want to be present, or be present as much as possible, you want to be busy and keep the wheels turning when that is through releasing music or touring. Without touring and limited sort of chance to make music in studios, you’ve got to think of other ways outside the box. I’m pretty lucky personally because I’ve been twitch streaming for about a year and a half now, so it’s worked out kind of well for me that I am able to stream more regularly. That’s totally free for people to drop in and have a chat, and I’ve been encouraging to rest of the guys to do live streaming as much as possible. Our drummer Ashley has really been smashing it since lockdown started, he has been doing on his Instagram asking people who are into our band “who wants me to drum this song” and they will vote on song they want him to drum, and he will do live playthroughs. 

What have you learned about yourself being in a band for the past five years?
I want to say that I’ve learned it, but it’s more something that I’ve learned a bit about and I’m trying to work on, it is really hard but I’m trying to remind myself that happiness is a state of mind, not a destination. So not getting all bogged down about how big the band is, or how many plays it got, what festivals you got on, all that shit is secondary to just try to be happy with what you currently have, and just appreciate being alive instead of getting too caught up in the rat race. It is hard though, it takes maturity and a lot of self-reflection, to be like ‘everything is cool’ and ‘I should be happy about this’. The first three years is probably the saddest I’ve ever been because I was so obsessed with the business side of things, I was the guy who was checking the stats every day. I lost sight of a lot of things and didn’t put a lot of time into personal relationships as I could, and it’s more important now than ever to take it easy sometimes and realise what really matters.

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Is there a concept that you guys are wanting to bring out with your next album? Are there any topics that you want to uncover or start a conversation about?
With Holding Absence, a lot of our music and lyrics definitely touch on emotions, and to remind people that it’s okay not to be okay and that you want to confront problems instead of masking them. I don’t think any of our lyrics explicitly say that though, but I know that with any platform we get through the band, we say what we care about personally. For me, I am really passionate about veganism and being straightedge. Everybody in the band is a super liberal person, we want as much equality as possible for things like trans rights, or racism, or anything to do with the LGBTQ+ community. With the music, it is just mainly emotional music that people can use in whatever way they want. If you want to put our music on and have a good old cry, that’s totally healthy, or if you want to put on our music and dance around your bedroom and have a laugh, then that’s also perfectly okay. 

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Buy/Stream “Birdcage” HERE

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Connect with HOLDING ABSENCE
Website – Facebook – Instagram – Twitter

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AMNPLIFY – DB