Interview: Learning How to Swim Static with Elder Island
The Bristol-based band discusses creating music during a pandemic, their college selves, and the upcoming release of their sophomore album Swimming Static.
Written by Srija Reddy
Photo courtesy of Nic Kane
Elder Island is made up of vocalist and cellist Katy Sargent, bassist/beat maestro Luke Thornton, and guitarist/synth master David Havard. Since meeting at university, this band has carved out a space in music through the blending of diverse genres and techniques in experimentation. They recently met with Afterglow to discuss their history as well as the release of their upcoming record Swimming Static.
Afterglow: Swimming Static — the name makes up two opposing forces. How did you come up with the name?
Katy: I like that you said that, it was two opposing forces, because we did want something that was like that. I think we had a lot of trouble this time kind of thinking of an album title. I think it was probably because I was trying to encapsulate everything that the album was in one phrase or one word, which is obviously impossible, and also if you get it, then it seems contrived. So in the end, we tried to make it more ambiguous and abstract. You could have turned it around and it could have been “static swimming,” which is kind of a bit more expansive and it gives more of an idea of someone swimming. So it’s open for interpretation a little bit but it also kind of captures that sort of stationary feeling that we had when we were making it because it was of one time and one place.
Luke: I mean bless Katy because I prefer people to be guessing what we’re intending and Katy does it so well with her lyrics anyway. When it comes to naming something, I’m always on the side of ambiguity and being like, “no, it could be more than that.” There’s something beautiful with that, those play on words. It’s push and pull.
I imagine making an album must be a grueling process, only amplified by the stress of quarantine. How did your process of creating this album change in adapting to this new normal — did you find that it impacted your resulting sound?
Luke: We started writing the album with a clean slate around February. We just came down into the studio and wrote for five to six weeks solid, and we just came away with like 60 creations of songs of all different types of lengths. Some were 15 minutes and some were an hour and everywhere in between.
Katy: That was like a whirlwind, sort of a wonderful time for us.
Luke: Letting loose, weren’t we? And then when lockdown happened it was just a case of us listening and analyzing and then picking what we enjoyed the most and crafting them a bit more. That was a bit of a struggle, wasn’t it?
Katy: It coincided with us finding out that one of our interfaces had broken. So it meant that we had to re-record a lot of stuff that we hadn't anticipated to record, which meant it just got very focused in, because then you start to really think like,”Is this the sound that I want to make? Maybe I'll try a thousand other sounds before I go back to the original one.”
Luke: COVID didn’t hugely impact us in the beginning but as the record was produced and finalized and COVID was still going on … There was still this uncertainty all the time of when you were going to enjoy something. When we were producing the song it ended up turning out a bit darker, or there's a bit more escapism there. Like with the sounds that we have crafted, sometimes they're a bit ethereal. I spent a long time having discussions with Katy going, “What was the original essence of this? And how can I re-record so we have it?”
Katy: Poor Luke gets lots of impossible tasks. Like I say, “I want it to sound like golden water,” and Luke will be like, “What the f-ck?” And then he usually makes it sound like that.
The way you write music is unique in it’s experimentation. I remember another interview described it as a campfire method, which I loved. How does this method impact your final result? Are there any particular songs on the album that really benefited from this process?
Katy: I think “Sacred,” definitely. It had these wonderful dynamics and drops in the original live session but when we took it into the piano and looked at it as a structure for a shorter song, we knew we wanted to make it a good structure. That’s one that we really played around with and we added that extra chorus bits afterwards. That made it such a stronger song, going through that process. But also, generally all of them. There’s just a richness that comes from that process.
I personally loved “Feral”’s music video in how you built off horror tropes. What was it like filming “Feral” during the pandemic? Did it impact the end result?
Katy: The filming process was a lot of fun because you’re running around with no shoes on in the middle of nowhere.
Luke: You’re sleep deprived and you start laughing as soon as it cuts.
Katy: It was the first time we’d worked with Jordan. We just laid the stuff at his feet, like, “Here’s a lot of concepts and here’s a lot of horror tropes.” And then we got into conversation about different horror films but kind of stuff from our childhood that have frightened us. You always have horror films that you accidentally watched as a kid or you watched at somebody else’s house that stuck with you — those scenes where you're like, “Oh God.” And one of those for me was “Candyman” (1992) and “Are You Afraid of the Dark?” (1990), which [the latter] is actually made for kids but some of those just traumatized me. We were looking at all of those horror tropes and fit it in with its own twist — which is where the weird Amish clothing came in.
Katy: Filming day was incredible — it was a lot of fun. We did another filming day with the car to have some normality in it. And we did some shots where I came down a road with Jordan in a car and the camera mounted on the front. And it was the middle of the night, and we were just praying no one came around the corner cause they’d just see this girl in a nightie being chased by this guy in a car, running barefoot down country lanes.
I also saw that you have new tour dates for your U.K. tour in the fall. How do you feel about going back on tour again?
Luke: Excited, a bit apprehensive. I'm worried that it won't happen again because of U.K. attitudes to healing and COVID. I guess it's done on this basis at the moment that the vaccines [are] getting rolled out at a pace where people will be comfortable to go enjoy themselves and finally be able to rid themselves of being stuck here. But it's definitely exciting. They're trying to plan a U.S. tour and, hopefully, a Europe tour as well. So, all of these things, if they all go to plan, then yeah, it will be really fun. Miss it.
What do you wish your college selves knew before you started this career?
Katy: Ooh, talking to past selves. We never knew we were going to be musicians.
Luke: Yeah, sell all of your photography equipment now, you're not going to be a photographer. Buy recording equipment.
Katy: Start early.
Luke: Stop buying lenses. Film’s dead, stop using it. I love film, I’m only joking. Um it's a long road. It’s 2010 we graduated, so It’s been 11 years. If I could speak to myself 11 years ago I’d just be like, “Whatever you want to do it’s not going to happen in five years. Expect it to be five, ten years.”
Your band is really rooted in experimentation and growth. In your next iteration, where do you see Elder Island going? What’s next?
Katy: I feel like we might descend back into the really experimental zone. I feel like this one is quite sculpted and now I’ve kind of ticked that off with a few more poppy tracks like “Purely Educational” and “Sacred.” They’re not conventional but they are quite like, conventional, directional.
Luke: Yeah, I hope so. I’d really love to — with some more avant garde techniques of experimentation.
Katy: We’re going to get a little bit wavy with it.
Luke: If Dave allows it anyway.
Katy: Dave wont allow it.
Luke: (laughs) Dave really reigns it in with me and Katy.
Katy: I feel like it works in a kind of nice, level, three-way seesaw — do you call them seesaws in America?
To wrap, is there anything else you would like to add?
Katy: Keep your eyes out for any dates in the U.S. All the vinyls and physical preorders are on sale, and keep your eyes open for the album dropping I suppose.
Luke: Thank you for listening.
Swimming Static drops on May 28. In the meantime, be sure to check out Elder Island at https://www.elderisland.com/, and follow them on Spotify, Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter.
This interview has been minimally edited for clarity and length.