My interview with Tyler Holmes. Their album ‘Patience’ was released in September via Ratskin Records.

Diya: Good afternoon, Tyler. It’s so lovely to see you. How are you doing on this beautiful November afternoon?

Tyler: I’m doing great. Yeah, I’m doing great. How about you?

Diya: Great. The rain has us all in a very cozy mood over here in Southern California. So we’ll start from the beginning. I did some digging and learned that you’ve been releasing music since the 2010s, rolling out experimental soundscapes and meticulous electronic compositions. I first stumbled across your solo work upon seeing you open for Rachika Nayar and Nina Keith’s project Disniblud in LA last month, and I really enjoyed your synthesis of visual and sonic experimentation, paired with a minimal and tasteful setup–which brought the music from Patience to life amidst the stage fog and the darkness. Can you tell me a little bit about your musical background and how it informs your artistic philosophy to this point?

Tyler: Sure. I think that kind of…usually explains why I do what I do, and it makes a little more sense, especially this release. I was always an artist as a kid. As a trauma response, I would draw constantly–which evolved into…I went to an art high school, and I was studying classical painting, where we had to learn to paint like the Dutch masters, which was interesting, because I really wanted to be, like, conceptual and a freak. And they were like, “You’re on a scholarship. You’re a black. You know, if you want to be weird, you’ve got to be Chuck Close first.” I’m old, so it was around that time that I got a computer in the home. And it had, like, a little computer mic. And I just started making really weird sound collages and soundscapes and just seeing what I could do using sound and samples, sort of like a sculpture. Like, I would just take really small clips of sound and arrange them. And the program that I used was Microsoft Sound Recorder.

Diya: Yes–from the 90s, right?

Tyler: Yeah. It was, like, somebody’s throwaway computer that I was using. So I used that and I made a lot of samples and made really weird songs and made really ornate packaging for them and would give them to my friends. Towards the end of high school, I started to be, like, oh, what if I tried to make these sound like songs, you know? That program is blind. It’s not a DAW. You can’t see where you’re putting anything. So it was a lot of my terrible math. And I learned later–I was like, oh, all of these songs are the same BPM for the most part because I’m just clipping them all the same way. So yeah, that’s how I got started. And then eventually, I started to want to make things that had more song-like quality. And I’ve had different iterations of the Tyler Holmes project where I have a full band. I always say that it’s an electro-acoustic project because I love to play with…The show that you saw–I was playing with my most frequent collaborator, Peekaboo, and she’s a cellist. I love to play with the baroque girls and do experimental weird stuff. So yeah, that’s how I really got into fusing the stuff together.

Diya: Yeah, and that actually really brings me to one of my favorite parts of your live performance, which was the incorporation of the cello with Peekaboo playing it. I really enjoyed the marriage of manipulated acoustic and electronic elements in Patience, and I think they blend very nicely with the more grainy and white noise-centric elements of the project. I also noticed some more rhythmic and percussive synth-forward notions, especially towards the middle of the album, which kind of sits in the uncanny valley of organic and otherworldly sound, which I’m interested in. Moreover, I’m always fascinated in knowing how the choices were made in terms of the instrumentation, melodic, and rhythmic elements of Patience. Can you tell me 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?

Tyler: Sure. I started writing Patience, like, you know, how a music project starts. I mean, maybe some people set out like, I’m going to write this specific project, but it was like, I went through a breakup, I started making songs. And it was pretty clear after I made one of the songs on there–”Commercial Success”. [It’s] the first one that I made. And that’s the first song that I played at the show. And that song, I was like, oh, this is like going into more ambient territory. And I was like, I think this is sort of like the direction that I want to go in. Because I’ve made songs–I’ve made stuff that to me sounds a little more poppy. I made a lot of experimental music–this was around the time I had opened up for Florist and I had more of a folksy band, and I opened for my favorite artist, Grouper–(Diya: I love Grouper. Tyler: Yeah, she’s incredible)–and doing these sort of ambient things, and I was like doing some sound healing, different projects like that and it just seemed like a more fertile territory to experiment. Because I’ve been talking about trauma for a long time now. So to explore, actually, the healing part of it in the music, I think, was kind of new and interesting to me. So that’s really how it started. And Patience is like a two-parter. The second record is called Facsimile. And that has the, like, songs. They’re, like… To me, I was proposing it as “the pop album”. But I was shopping it around at first to record labels. And one was like, “It’s pretty deceitful to call this pop.” There’s some experimentation with different time signatures and the orchestration is really ornate and there’s a lot of changes and just like a lot of experiments for me. And those two pieces are, like, the first pieces working with instrumentalists where I’ve composed every part of the music and it’s not improv or open to interpretation. So, yeah, that was that process. I worked with my bandmate–actually, that’s sort of how we started forming our band. She recorded some of both of these records.

Diya: Yeah, Josephine..?

Tyler: Josephine Shetty, yeah. So that was a big project. I worked with, actually, a lot of artists on this next record. Initially, it was one project, and I eventually was like, okay this is 90 plus minutes of music. I was like, nobody’s gonna listen to this in one sitting, I have to split it up. So then I was, like, Patience is going to be the ambient experimental noise record. And then there was a period where it was done and I was doing all the release stuff and that all got pushed back. It initially was going to come out at the beginning of summer, but there was a couple hiccups, and once the hiccups arose, I was like, it doesn’t really make sense to me, putting out this long, languid, depressing album in the summer. I’m like, who’s gonna be in their convertible in 100 degrees bumping this, like, ambient whirr? So I was like, let’s push it back to September because then it’ll be kind of more the mood. When I pushed it back, then I started making new songs. I moved into this apartment–I actually live with Nina Keith, and she has a lot of crazy instruments around. I was like, oh, let’s get to work, you know? So a lot of the stuff in the midsection of the album that you’re talking about, the “uncanny valley”, I was like, okay, let’s make some songs. So I made, like, two or three song-like things. And “Artifact”, that single, was guitar initially, and I changed it because Nina has a cello, so I recorded myself making a lot of, cello loops. That was a process. It was an experiment, and then it came together with some fun add-ons at the end.

Diya: Yeah, that reminds me of my last interview with Xiu Xiu. Jamie talked a little bit about Switchblades being around the studio and the recording space. And that kind of reminds me a little bit about what you’re talking about with the weird instruments and the cellos and just how whatever was around you kind of shaped your process. That’s interesting. Just a parallel.

Tyler: Love Xiu Xiu.

Diya: Yeah, no, me too. I talked a bit about the soundscapes of this album, and I think personally owning it on tape [holds up cassette] further brings out some of that texture. I think I definitely see where your idea of “trapping the ghost” fits in, and I feel that the natural ebb and flow of the project kind of brings to mind the idea of a natural homeostasis and the idea of nature regulating its beings despite it being capable of extreme conditions. I know you’re influenced by literary works such as those of Mark Twain and Jeff Vandermeer, and moreover, I’d like to know–what were some of the main inspirations for Patience? And this could be other music, media, literature, films, spiritual occurrences, religious epiphanies, artistic manifestos, evocative ghosts, etc.

Tyler: [Laughs] Wow, I love evocative ghosts. That’s great. I’m stealing that from you–no, just kidding. So…In the press release and all that stuff, it talks about the Mark Twain book, “No. 44”, The Mysterious Stranger, and the Southern Reach trilogy, Jack Vandermeer. And those definitely feature those concepts pretty strongly, of sort of capturing the human element whether it’s the spirit, the soul, consciousness…So that was really interesting to me and I sort of went through this period where I was ingesting all the media that I could find that’s about those concepts, so there’s a lot of things…”The Prestige”, I think, is very interesting. That has a little bit of that, there’s a lot of Black Mirror that delves into sort of like…What happens when you put your brain or your consciousness somewhere else? And I think all of this stuff just presents me with the same question over and over again, which is just so interesting to me. And I love seeing it in all of these different media…I feel like there’s a lot of different new theories about consciousness. Is consciousness like the internet and are we all on consciousness? Is consciousness like the cloud and we’re uploading our information to it? So I just love thinking about these concepts. I feel like grief and death has been such a big part of my life and a big part of my work. So I think this step of just imagining what that is, is really interesting to me, even if it’s nothing, even if, you know, we die and it’s a black screen. Yeah. I’m curious about that moment that we are animated and what it is. So, yeah–all of that different stuff was really inspiring me. If you know any other media where that happens, please send it my way. I’m always so curious. Clones, people being copied. That is so interesting to me.

Diya: Yeah, that’s interesting, definitely. I see some of that with the themes and song titles as well, which brings me to the album artwork for Patience. It’s a captivating sculpture and the colors and textures kind of bring to mind a creature trapped in fossilized amber. And I’d love to know the story behind that art and why it was chosen to represent this album.

Tyler: It’s so fun. I love that question. The sculptures are made by the love of my life, Helena Martinez Bravo. And I had seen some pieces by…I think their name is Yuji Ajamasu, at PS1 in New York and I had seen some other sculptures that used trash and, like, you were talking about before, the “whatever instrument’s around”–I’m really interested in that concept of “availableism”, like Cindy Sherman, who’s like, “I use myself because I’m always around”. So I had a really long discussion with Helena one day, we talked on the phone for like, three or four hours. And I was like, “This is what I’m picturing.” She has done a lot of collage work. And she’s created a lot of work that I’d maybe use for a cover, or like, she’s done a lot of interesting things with it. And going into this project that we talked about…Eventually we came to the consensus–I was like “Oh, you should make the cover!” And after we had that conversation, she was like, ”All right, I’m gonna make things.” I think we both took one sculpture class in college, but she hadn’t really made sculptures before like that. And she just did research, bought a bunch of shit, she made, like, 20 sculptures…Facsimile will have two of the sculptures on the cover, and the single cover for “Artifact” actually features a different sculpture. It looks kind of similar, but it’s a different object. So yeah, that’s how they came to be. There’s a lot of them. They’re really beautiful. They’re really freaky and weird…The main thing is they’re meant to capture…There is something that is, like, corporeal and tactile and visceral about them. And then there’s these ink washes and things that have this ephemeral quality that is evocative, but you can’t really see what, you know?

Diya: Yeah, it’s really interesting. And it also reminds me of the music video for “Copy” because that kind of seems, again, simultaneously earthly and alien with organic textures coupled with mystical shiny goop, kind of reminding me of amniotic fluid. And with that in mind, my reading of it had a lot more to do with rebirth and finding one’s place in a world that’s kind of riddled with natural absurdity. Can you tell me a little bit more about the choice to include all these visuals in your music video and how they function in tandem with the album’s themes?

Tyler: So for the music video, I worked with my friend D.B. Amorin, and they do a lot of crazy glitchy shit, and when we were putting that together, it was kind of a time crunch… We made this music video for my song “To Accept”, that was on my last record. We had shot, like, a whole series of images for that and then we scrapped them and came up with a new concept and filmed a whole new video, so some of the footage from that, we had never used. So I sent that to D.B. because I was like “Here’s some more stuff for you to manipulate and use to create images, so it’s not all from scratch in this limited amount of time.” So all of the images of me in that are from that. And there was a 3D scan that I believe he used. So that other video… Kind of mimics cloning or something like that. And with copy, similarly, it all focuses on those concepts of recreating or duplicating yourself and just what physical effects that has and what existential artifacts exist from that. So yeah, I think he created a lot of things. A lot of the palettes in the visuals are literally my flesh and hair manipulated. So it’s, like, very alive and really weird. I love it. It’s really cool.

Diya: Yeah. That actually brings us back to the full circle with the–you said, “availableism”, was it? (Tyler: Yeah. Diya: Yeah.) ‘Cause you were right there and you were part of the medium.

Tyler: Yeah. And I had the footage. I was like, ”There you go.”

Diya: That’s awesome. Let’s talk gear. What would you say is the most essential piece of gear to the particular sound of patience?

Tyler: So there’s… A pedal chain, I think, that I actually created within the DAW, but the pedal chain is actually where I sort of like–with “Commercial Success” and a lot of the songs, that’s where I really started using a similar pedal chain that created this sort of, like, natural looping. And this natural looping that sort of like, doesn’t dissipate and kind of like builds on itself and distorts and then sort of disintegrates because of the distortion. So I think that was probably the most critical because that takes a lot of the songs on the journey that they go on… I’ve been obsessed since I was a teenager, and I first heard some Radiohead songs where there was this thing that I would call the voice that goes on forever. I think a really clear example is “The Rip” by Portishead. She sort of hits this note and then it’s looped in a way…

Diya: Yes! I know exactly what part of that song you’re talking about. It’s kind of like the Kaoss Pad sound maybe. I’m not exactly sure if she used the Kaoss Pad, but yeah.

Tyler: There’s a lot of ways you can mimic that. And I’ve seen a performance where it seems like they’re just using a synth and I’m like, it really sounds like her voice, guys. But yeah, I really was obsessed with that concept. So trying to create something like that, that’s maybe a little uglier and a little grainier, I think, was the essential thing.

Diya:  Yeah, that’s cool. And so for the last question, if you were stranded on a desert island and could only take three pieces of gear with you, what would they be and why?

Tyler: Desert island… Well, do I get to ask a follow-up question?

Diya: [Sighs] Yes.

Tyler: Is there electricity?

Diya: You can find a way. People make alarm clocks with potatoes. I’m sure there’s a way. Let’s assume yes.

Tyler: Okay…Something that’s always been cute for me is, like, acoustic guitar. I am not a guitarist. I, in fact, hate playing the guitar. It hurts. Don’t like it. The piano is so nice and natural and seems like you were meant to play it. The guitar hurts, but I’d probably bring an acoustic guitar, because when I’ve had my gear be broken, the guitar just does it. You know, you can just make the sounds. So probably an acoustic guitar, maybe an acoustic piano–even though that would only sound good for a year or so, you know? Hmm, what else… Oh, tape recorder!

Diya: I was just gonna say that. I had an inkling you would say tape recorder.

Tyler: Yeah, there’s a chapter in Genesis P-Orridge’s book called “A Tape Recorder is a Weapon”. I think that is very true.

Diya: I am curious if the song title “Blank Tape” has anything to do with that, just randomly.

Tyler: So, blank tape was more…I think the concept is, you know–if we’re thinking about the human consciousness or soul or whatever being copied, I’m thinking of what if you do that and it’s blank or it’s ruined or it’s compromised in some ways. That also came from just a feeling of feeling pretty empty. So it was like, I’m serving nothing right now.

Diya: Thank you. Thanks so much for chatting with me. It’s been interesting to see this album through multiple perspectives–both the interviewer’s perspective as well as the audience’s live perspective, as well as the listener’s perspective, just with the tape copy. So that’s been really great. Thank you.

Tyler: Thank you. I really appreciate it.