4.8 • 6.4K Ratings
🗓️ 29 October 2014
⏱️ 14 minutes
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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.
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0:00.0 | 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 Rishikesh, your way. |
0:15.0 | Julia Holt her studied composition and in the song Horn's surrounding me, she ranges not only acoustic and electronic instruments, but also layers of ambient field recordings and background noise. |
0:25.0 | The song was released in 2013 on our claimed 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. |
0:55.0 | My name is Julia Holt her. I wrote Horn's 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. |
1:26.0 | I'm a Swiss. |
1:31.0 | We played this song that had no name for like a year and a half live and had these other lyrics, but then I decided to put my own lyrics to it and that was what Horn's surrounding me became. |
1:56.0 | The song is about being kind of bombarded by noise and sound and needing to find one's own inner piece, I guess. |
2:12.0 | I just think of the loudness of brass and I thought that something abrasive like that was what I wanted and I was trying to almost imagining 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. |
2:32.0 | So I recall the words of love who sat me in the sun. |
2:40.0 | Somehow I 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. |
2:50.0 | 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. |
3:00.0 | And that was my closest comparison. |
3:20.0 | So I guess I'm trying to evoke the fear of a man was kind of fun. So we actually staged a chase on the top of a building. |
3:31.0 | And I was just like, you know, breathing and like doing what I needed to do for the song and just running. |
3:48.0 | I was getting really literal with that, I guess. I just love atmosphere a lot and cinematic kind of moments. |
4:01.0 | There's also like sort of a field recording that I did once. It'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. |
4:15.0 | It's a song I made for fun one day that's inside of horns around me. |
4:31.0 | 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. |
4:41.0 | 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. |
4:50.0 | And I think it was attractive to me because I was trying to find my voice as they say. |
4:54.0 | It's interesting the environment much more than just like musical concepts. |
4:59.0 | I'll frequently like record something that just seems really exciting to me both in terms of like the sound source. |
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