My interview with Julia Holter. She released her most recent album, ‘Something in the Room She Moves’ in March via Domino.

Diya: Good morning, Julia. It’s so lovely to see you. How are you doing on this fine April morning?

Julia: I’m good, yeah. Thank you.

Diya: Let’s start from the beginning. I did some digging and learned that you studied composition and electronic music and that your earlier work was born out of bedroom recordings and was inspired largely by literature, namely the works of Virginia Woolf and Frank O’Hara. Can you tell me a little bit more about your musical background and how it informs your artistic philosophy to this point?

Julia: Yeah, I started making music in my late teens, and I was in a really nice high school in LA that had a lot of…We were doing music theory and stuff, so I kind of got into composition that way, like writing for music for people to play, but I wasn’t really a performer. And then I was doing composition for a few years in college and then came upon recording and started to enjoy singing for the first time. And so that’s how I got really sucked into recording myself and ultimately then became a performer of my own music. And I think ever since, I’ve been making music that is kind of still kind of in that same vein of what I was interested in when I first started making music, which is, like, timbre and not so much telling a story in my music as much as exploring feelings and getting across certain feelings and textures…A little more the substance of the sound, and focused on that more than narratives. Songwriting, I guess. Yeah.

Diya: Yeah. A lot of this album is very fluid and elegant, especially with the expansive soundscapes. I love the sweeping cascades of instrumentals paired with your evocative vocals. And there are some really utopian arrangements on this project that have me as a listener transported to another glowing realm. Can you tell me a little bit about your creative process on this album, along with its sonic and emotional landscapes and how they show up through some of your songwriting, vocal and instrumental choices?

Julia: I mean, whenever I start making music, I generally don’t know what I’m going to do. There are certain things that are kind of abstract, that are maybe inspiring to me, but I always am just sort of improvising ideas. And I do that often at the keyboard with my microphone and just trying out chords and while also singing at the same time and pressing record. And just like most of it is usually not good, but then there’s sometimes little bits that I hold on to and develop. So that’s how I work on a lot of my music. Not all of it, though. That’s how I worked on many of the songs on this record. And what emerged as I’ve kind of parsed through these improvisations I do and found one thing or two compelling…There’s sort of a point where you maybe kind of feel that a couple of these different things could work together. And that’s how I start to feel that there might be a record there. And then it’s a process of just…I wasn’t developing any particular song deeply. I had a lot of different drafts for a long time. And a lot of the things that seemed to pop up were–I was really interested in working with Deb Hoff, who’s played bass on my records for over 10 years now, I guess, since Loud City Song. And I was really interested in working with her on fretless bass, where a lot of times in the past there’s a lot of upright in my music. Upright fifth double bass. And she’s an amazing upright player. There was, like, a moment on Loud City Song. There’s a song called “In the Green Wild” where she played a fretless. And I loved it. And I love fretless electric. So I thought it would be nice to kind of build the album around the fretless. One of the first thoughts I had was having that kind of electric, flowing sound as a nice counterpoint to a kind of flowing vocal. And I had certain atmospheres in mind, I guess, like trying to bring out certain feelings. I don’t know. I was really focused on deep love, I guess, and almost being inside the body, maybe inside in the heart or in the belly or in your throat or…I think a lot of that record–I think there’s a lot of body in it. It was the height of the pandemic at this time, and I was pregnant, so it was a lot of body. Because the pandemic was a lot about bodies and keeping bodies apart so they don’t spread viruses between each other. So, like, keeping away from each other’s breath. There’s just a lot of ruminating on the body during this time period. And I also was pregnant, which was a very different experience for me than one I’d ever had.  The music maybe reflects that…Yeah, this sort of, like, underwater or inside-the-body kind of sounds.

Diya: Yeah, absolutely. Especially with all the fretless–all the sliding, the glissando. I think…The ebb and flow of the body embodies that. So I did previously touch on the literary and poetic influences. But I also know that you were thinking about Studio Ghibli films, namely Ponyo. And while I was listening through Something in the Room She Moves, I noticed the transformative nature of the music. While it’s grand and sweeping in many places, it’s also very introspective and deeply internal, pairing with motifs of birth, death, and transitioning through different stages of being. The themes of deep love and reverence for both loved ones and their memories, as well as making something like music so carefully and intentionally stood out to me. This album read as a deep exploration of–and devotion to–transformation. And I’d like to know what were some of the main inspirations for this project. That could be other music, media, literature, spiritual occurrences, film, religious epiphanies, etc.

Julia: Yeah…I wasn’t really reading during this time in my life. I was kind of sleep deprived often, as a new parent. Like, a lot of times in the past, if I’m working on a record, I have books all around me and I’m kind of reading them all and they kind of inspire me because words inspire me and stories inspire me. But I think this was different. I’m not normally very in touch with my body and I suddenly had to–everything was about my body…I think a lot of the record is kind of around that and. And life and death. I had this horrific death of my nephew that happened within the same two years of my daughter being born. And this is the period I was finishing the record and I think there’s just a lot of–that’s more what’s going on in the record. It wasn’t like something I inserted in there. I think it just happens. It’s just becomes part of it. There’s one text by Hélène Cixous, Writing Blind, which I sort of do. That is one text I mentioned in relation to the song “Spinning”, which is [an] exploration, I could say, of this state of seeking passion or seeking the thing that will move you, or it’s sort of a state of exploring, a state of being. And in the case of that Hélène Cixous essay, there’s this kind of urgency of finding this space of creativity, the space of this fertile creative mind space. It’s all about the night being the time when we don’t see so our imagination can run free, and it has this really urgent quality to it. I just drew upon that for the vibe of that song. And that sort of day and night imagery worked well because I have a song, “Sun Girl”, and there’s this kind of day-night thing going on in the record as a result. Because you’ve got the daytime…You’re going outside with your eyes squinting because it’s too bright and everything’s loud and, like, kind of intense and you’re kind of forced out of your comfort zone.

Diya: Being born.

Julia: Yeah, sure, like being born. I didn’t think of that, but that’s true. And then night is like that safe space of creativity where you’re able to, like, make stuff, make a song. And this time period of my life–I was having a lot of trouble with finding that space where I could be creative because of the stuff going on, basically, and just big changes. To me, it was just this time period of kind of embracing change, but also still seeking that comfort zone of the things that are important for me as an artist, I guess it could be desire in any way. It could be desire in the creative world or desire in love. But it’s that song. It’s like sort of trying to channel that.

Diya: Absolutely. Beautiful. I’m also really interested in the album artwork. I love the expressive colors and application of the medium on the album cover. And I’d love to know the story behind it and what it means to you.

Julia: Yeah. The album cover is a pre-existing painting by a childhood friend, Christina Torls, a painting called “Wrestlin”. It’s probably on display somewhere in the world because Christina has a lot of her work being shown all over the place, because her work is amazing and people love it. And I’ve seen her work for years in galleries. But like, I really struggled with thinking of an album cover for this record because in the past I would often do kind of layered photos. My friend Dicky Bahto has done these really amazing photographs and they’re often quite layered and mysterious for this record. And I was trying to imagine what the cover would be as a photograph in any way. Because I wanted to somehow capture visually that visceral feeling of the record. And I kind of like the idea of bodies somehow being there. But a photograph of bodies didn’t feel right to me. I kind of wanted it to somehow be kind of visceral and maybe a little bit like tactile or something and I was like, well, I don’t want to have photographs of bodies. I wanted it to almost be a little bit gnarly or a little like it could be violent or it could be romantic or something. But then it was perfect with this. I thought of Christina because Christina’s work also, again, is actually quite layered–just like Dicky’s–in a very different way. And I also love layers of color in my music. And I think that Christina’s work is very like–there’s so many different textures going on and there’s often, like–in the case of Wrestlin’, this cover, it’s quite clear that there’s two figures. But sometimes there’s an extra hand–or like in her work, I think there maybe is a limb or two that’s a little, like, whose limb could that be? But generally, yeah, her work often [captures] who knows how many bodies in movement, rather, it could be one body moving, or it could be more than one body, or it could be, like, five. Or there’s, like, all these possibilities. And that kind of infiniteness of her work. And I liked that it kind of feels, like, intimate with the bodies, but it also could be violent, but it’s maybe just romantic. Like, I was very interested in this thing…When you have a baby, there’s this thing called skin contact where it’s important for you to touch skin with your baby. And I’ve been really into that and oxytocin with this record. So somehow bodies touching…It’s really important to me, this record. So, yeah.

Diya: Yeah. The music videos in this album are super memorable. “Evening Mood”’s video feels grounded with the use of interpretive dance by Tatiana Luboviski-Acosta and natural landscapes, as well as the homespun quality of the video. The video for “Spinning” is grand and enthralling, reminding me of the childlike wonder of watching a hot air balloon land or sitting under a colorful parachute. Both videos seem to have this running theme of embodying the vastness and beauty of one’s surroundings while maintaining a deep curiosity and love for the process of being creative. Can you tell me a little bit more about the choices to include these visuals in your music videos and how they function in tandem with the album’s themes?

Julia: Yeah, “Sun Girl” was the first video, and Tammy Wynn did that one, and it’s incredible animation. Basically I sent Tammy this sort of, like, vibe and feeling of what “Sun Girl” was for me, and I sent her the album cover, Christina Quarles’s painting. And Tammy took [the] general color palette, and came up with a really cool premise, which was–there’s this figure that’s, like, wandering around in the video, and when it looks at the sun, it dreams and has these psychedelic dreams. And that was the premise. And so, I mean, she just ran with it and made this video. The only real involvement I had was that I sent her the song and sort of what the song is for me. And that’s generally true. I don’t usually control the videos that much, but sometimes the editing and stuff if I’m in it, for better or for worse. But the next one was “Spinning”, which was a really brilliant concept, kind of similar thing where I just sent them the song. So this was Nicola and Juliana Giraffe, the Giraffe Sisters. Based on the same thing where I sent them stuff about the song and the album cover. They again, kind of worked with that color palette, and they came up with this beautiful idea of this parachute and that was the focal point of the whole video. We just moved around with the parachute. It’s this urgent feeling. And I felt like the video did a good job of just, like, focusing on that urgent feeling. It’s all like this parachute and a little bit childlike quality, which feels nice because we’re talking about this primal seek for inspiration and imagination. So their idea of parachute felt appropriate. And it was psychedelic because it had those crazy colors…And kind of has that spinning quality innately because it’s got these stripes.

Diya: Yeah.

Julia: And then “Evening Mood”, Dicky Bahto–a frequent collaborator, really good friend of mine–and I just…All I knew is that I thought it’d be really nice to have someone moving in this film. Not myself, but someone who’s good at moving their body. It’s not really something that I can claim. As I said earlier, I’m not very in touch with my body, so I think Tati did a beautiful job. He did a beautiful job on that. He just shot them in various, beautiful spots in the Bay and Bay Area, I think. And I just loved all the movement and the hand stuff. Yeah, I really loved that.

Diya: Let’s talk gear. What would you say was the most essential piece of gear to the particular sound of this album?

Julia: I think the fretless bass. Deb’s fretless bass, which she performed, and also wrote a lot of the bass lines. And that’s very essential. And then I think the second one, for me personally–even though it’s not on every track–it was the Yamaha CS60, which is a synthesizer that’s hard to come by. But a lot of studios still have them in LA at least, or a few studios. Our CS80 is the most rare, but it’s the Blade Runner synth, and I’m obsessed with the synth. So I put it all over this record, and I think the MIDI version of that might be a lot on my record Aviary–my last record. I mean, Aviary is even more so that kind of, like, Blade Runner feeling. And I don’t know, I think that’s just my synth. I just love that synth sound. So it’s on many of my records. It has a really nice ribbon controller where it’s like gliss-y. You can do glisses. And it also has, just, extremely rich sound–and I am not a synth wizard so I can’t explain to you anything beyond that technically. But I just love messing with it. Yeah. Always sounds good.

Diya: Absolutely.

Julia: A lot of it’s on the track “Ocean”.

Diya: Lastly, if you were stranded on a desert island and could only take three pieces of gear with you, what would they be and why?

Julia: I’m not a big gear person. I’ve had my Nord stage for, like, 10, 12 years or something and I just use that. Because I’m a hoarder, I have all my old Casios and broken equipment. But I mean if I could acquire a Yamaha CS60 or Yamaha CS80, I would bring that. And then I do have a harmonium. Has been a big part of my life in certain ways. So like, an Indian style harmonium, which I have. And my partner has a bunch too. Maybe those two. But then we would want one non-keyboard instrument, so maybe I have to bring my pedal steel. I have this pedal steel that I inherited from my lovely Grandpa Ollie. It’s a really complicated instrument but I love this instrument so I’m really hoping to learn it. So I guess I would bring it to the desert island and learn how to play it.

Diya: Yeah, just a long term project. Well, that’s it for the questions. Thank you so much for chatting with me. Thank you for agreeing to do this interview.

Julia: Yeah!

Diya: It’s been really great getting to learn about your process as someone who’s been listening for quite a while now.

Julia: Nice. Yeah, great!

Diya: Very cool. Alright. Thank you, Julia.

Julia: Thanks for having me.

Diya: For sure. Thank you!