We spoke with dance pop trio, Holiday Mountain, about their upcoming EP, how the band prepares for festivals, and some of their favorite acts they caught at South By Southwest. Check out the interview below!
You guys have such an energetic and whimsical presence about yourselves, which is refreshing to see. When forming the band, how did you decide that this would be the type of music you guys would be creating?
Thank you! We really appreciate hearing that. It definitely didn’t happen over night. We went through a couple different phases of wiggling around in our collective musical space. I think it just took hours and hours and hours of playing together and discovering that we all really love hip hop, electronic music, and pop hits. As far as the energy level, it’s like this explosion of stomach butterflies that we have little control over. Something or someone else truly takes over- I recently watched a video of a performance of ours and thought “wow! who is that crazy bitch!?”
Even just the thought of getting on stage makes us wanna jump around!!
South By Southwest is filled with tons of incredible acts, were you excited to catch any artists in particular? Did you stumble across any new artists that you are now a fan of?
There were certainly a lot of shows we wanted to check out-mostly rap shows, but we were basically running from gig to gig the whole time. We played a show with an NY funk/soul inspired act called Great Caesar-they were awesome! Also, we got to meet the Australian neo-soul quartet Hiatus Kaiyote-we love hearing a band that can play the $hit out of their instruments!!
It’s been a while since we’ve seen an album from you guys. Is there any new music in the works, possibly a new album? If so, what information can you share with us about it?
Yasssss! We’ve been working hard for several years on our new recordings and are so excited to announce that we’ll be releasing ‘You Be You Pt.1’ on April 28th! The EP is available for pre-order on iTunes. There will be a ‘You Be You Pt.2’ to follow in the near future as well. We worked with producer CJ Eiriksson, who is most well known for his work with U2. He taught us so much about perfecting song form and flow. We put our soul and sweat into these heavy dance tracks and are so grateful the time has come to share them with the world.
You’re no stranger to playing festivals, having previously performed at CMJ and South By Southwest last year. Do you guys prepare differently for festivals versus any other show you would normally play?
We often find festivals to be more about physical stamina and endurance-similar to an athlete, we prepare for game time with a lot of emergen-C, high protein snacks, stretching, and lots and lots of coffee!!
What can we expect next from Holiday Mountain?
Soon we’ll be releasing our music video for ‘Feelin’ It’ which was shot with a 360° camera by Onion Creek Productions. We also have an Austin residency every Saturday in April at the Scoot Inn with national headliners like Man Man, Turquoise Jeep, MIS, Toy Selectah, and Suffers. Lastly, we have a 2 month tour to support ‘You Be You Pt.1’ from the beginning of May-June; we’ll be playing all around the US as well as parts of Canada and Mexico and we can’t wait to sweatily group hugs tons of new friends.
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