Cool Swiss Ambience: HOLM chill with ‘Flickering Leaves’.
Artist: HOLM
Title: Flickering Leaves
Format: Single (Digital Only)
Label: Quiet Love Records
Genre: Post-Rock/ Ambient
FLICKERING LEAVES
Lapping waves of warm sound contrast the frenetic, foam-lipped cascades hitting the streets of Zürich above the heads of post-rock three-piece, HOLM as they release the second track, FLICKERING LEAVES, from their carefully orchestrated, year-long album release. An unrushed road trip that set off in May, the latest release from the subterranean, improvisational trio arrives on Quiet Love Records, suitably evoking a moment of rest amongst the long, late-afternoon shadows of summer.
Holm’s full, second album, IN GARDENS, will be released in January 2022 with six more tracks pupating prior to release across the changing seasons. Recorded live and in one take, the delicate beauty of Holm’s latest compositions, developed in a former bomb shelter beneath the loud excesses of the Swiss financial capital, unfold and bloom in a middle space between taut, rhythmic discipline and billowing, untethered clouds of melody.
Flickering Leaves is a perfect example of their craft, opening with slow-changing, reverberating guitars, reminiscent of Durriti Column, before a slow train of percussion eventually makes ground and catches up. Where first single, Our Days And Years (https://maintainperspective.us16.list-manage.com/track/click?u=37c0e27b1119bdcd493ee74ad&id=4923c08d09&e=fb44602566), got as close to the gun-slinging kitsch of a Tarantino score as the band can allow, Flickering Leaves dials down the drama to a hum of intent. Future releases promise more of the same shapeshifting, yet coherent diversions across a complete and evocative body of work.
Just one of the exciting creative ventures that thrives beneath the concrete and steel of Zürich, Holm represent a constant wave of Swiss artists using both the cold, urban and picturesque, natural environments of their home country as the inspiration and backdrop for their art.
Formed of Alessandro Giannelli (drums), Dimitri Käch (guitar) and James Varghese (bass), the soothing grace of their music resists the excess of their Paradeplatz hideaway, working just out of sight beneath one of Europe’s most expensive postcodes.
Describing a small island, close to the mainland or a larger island, the band’s name–Holm– carries with it in itself connotations of retreat and of a secluded microcosm. Formed in 2018, the three musicians strive for perfection in the imperfect, constructing through creation and deconstruction and evoke the long, dark days above and below ground with wistful optimism.
Maintaining the spirit that brought them together, Holm’s work illustrates no predetermined goals, except to share a musical and emotional journey. Holm is a place to catch a fleeting glimpse of another truth, a location from which perspectives may change.
Bandcamp: holmisanisland.bandcamp.com (https://maintainperspective.us16.list-manage.com/track/click?u=37c0e27b1119bdcd493ee74ad&id=193d917af0&e=fb44602566)
Facebook: facebook.com/holmisanisland (https://maintainperspective.us16.list-manage.com/track/click?u=37c0e27b1119bdcd493ee74ad&id=f8d34c7f6d&e=fb44602566)
Instagram:instagram.com/holmisanisland (https://maintainperspective.us16.list-manage.com/track/click?u=37c0e27b1119bdcd493ee74ad&id=974de4061d&e=fb44602566)
Web: holmband.com (https://maintainperspective.us16.list-manage.com/track/click?u=37c0e27b1119bdcd493ee74ad&id=ed2147d1cd&e=fb44602566)