Neu Get To Know… holybones
The intriguing masked outfit shaking up London’s electronic scene.
Hello and welcome back to DIY’s introducing feature, Get To Know… which aims to get you a little bit closer to the buzziest acts that have been catching our eye as of late, and working out what makes them tick.
Doubtless, most artists strive to keep their work as a central focus, unobscured by preconceptions or prejudices. But few do so as effectively as holybones - the underground alt-electronic collective who, by donning anonymity-preserving facial bandages, truly let their output do the talking. Splicing together spoken word poetry in the vein of Antony Szmierek or fellow newcomer Dan Whitlam with glitchy beats and soulful sensibilities (particularly standout ‘SALTYWATER’), their debut EP ‘I got a good night’s sleep’ equally invokes the blurry euphoria of a basement dancefloor and the ebbing melancholy of the lonely night bus ride home, achieving the strange feat of conveying intimacy and community without ever revealing their identity.
To celebrate the EP’s release, we caught up with… some of holybones (we’re still not quite sure who) to satisfy at least some of our curiousity.
Describe your music to us in the form of a dating app bio.
I don’t know what I’m doing here. I’m scared and afraid. Help. (6’2”)
Who were some artists that inspired you when you were just starting out (and why)?
It was Soundcloud bootleg culture and trashy 2010s EDM that got us into making tunes originally. ‘Untrue’ by Burial just kind of changed how we thought about electronic music - how it could make you feel something really delicate. ‘EP2’ by FKA Twigs (the one that Arca produced) kind of blew our minds to the possibilities of laptop music too.
When we were teenagers, Seamus Coyle’s guitar riffs and Beaker Best’s drumming for Sticky Fingers gave us some of the best memories at gigs; early Jungle and The xx as well. Philip Larkin was a poet we loved - there was something endearing about him being a bit of a grumpy poet, and we would have loved to have met him. Baxter Dury was huge for his lyrics and storytelling - he inspired our first song ‘Dogs’; spoken word over music that felt toothy and badass was cool as hell to us. Then there was also a massive shared love of cinema and theatre that kind of glued the idea of holybones together: Danny Boyle, Killology by Gary Owen, and Yen by Anna Jordan were all huge.
What were the first songs/albums you became obsessed with (and why)?
Very early on, there was this band called The Huckleberries - a regional blue-grass band in Salisbury (where one of us grew up). His dad got the CD from them when they were busking in the town square, and used to play it every time they bombed down the lanes in his ‘90s VW Golf.
For another one of us, it was the official Lion King soundtrack - he’d force his mum to play Jeremy Irons’ ‘Be Prepared’ again and again whilst he and his brother atonally yelled along in booster seats in the back (sorry mum). Then obviously there was ‘Motion in the Ocean’ by McFly and ‘Busted’’s self-titled album.
Then we became friends with our cool older brothers, and it was all ‘American Idiot’, Flume’s first album, Porter Robinson’s ‘Worlds’, Tribes’ ‘Baby’, Circa Waves’ ‘Young Chasers’, Justice’s ‘Cross’, Arctic Monkeys’ ‘AM’, Peace’s first two albums, Sticky Fingers’ ‘Caress Your Soul’ and ‘Land of Pleasure’, Deadmau5’s ‘For Lack of a Better Name’, and Wolf Alice’s ‘My Love is Cool’.
“We’re just trying to follow in the footsteps of artists that we feel expressed themselves authentically.”
You’ve chosen to introduce yourselves to the world as enigmatic, masked figures. We don’t want to ruin the intrigue, but can you tell us a little bit about why concealing your identities has become part of the holybones project?
It started to protect a band member from a stalker. Then it crept into all our music videos. Nowadays, it’s something to do with hiding or healing. We don’t want to get too much into the weeds of it, but we find it useful.
In a world where social media encourages over-sharing and false closeness between strangers, there’s a particular freedom in holybones’ refusal to play that game. What’s the relationship between your self-presentation and sonic output?
We care as much about how we come across as anyone else. We’re actually pretty socially anxious people a lot of the time. But we find that holybones has become a bit of a place to put all of that - it’s like a kind of protection.
Social media isn’t completely bad - some really lovely things can happen with it as well. It just sucks when people aren’t authentic. We’re just trying to follow in the footsteps of artists that we feel expressed themselves authentically online. We try not to overthink it and just make stuff that we like.
If you could time travel back to one decade in history, which would you choose?
Getting a coffee at the Hanging Gardens of Babylon sounds mint.
Finally, DIY are coming around for dinner - what are you making?
The best cook in the band is part Persian, so you’re having Khoreshde Bademjan with a Shirazi Salad and Tadig.
‘I got a good night’s sleep’ is out now via Promised Land Recordings.
Records, etc at
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