Hollowed Sky have returned with a new album titled Unstrung! It’s definitely an album worth adding to your library and revisiting it often. I’ve jammed out to it several times since I first received my advance copy.
In this interview spotlight, I chat with the band about the new release, how things have been going over the last year, and more.
Full Q&A along with links and music below.
It’s great to see you’re back with new mixes! What can listeners expect when they click play on Unstrung?
“Unstrung” is approximately 45 minutes of what we consider to be our most definitive songs, mixed to a much higher standard than ever before. We feel that if you’ve listened to us before, in a lot of ways this will be like hearing the songs for the first time. If you haven’t listened to us before, this is the place to start.
How did you adapt in 2020 when the world was forced to go as virtual as possible?
Well, we had JUST released our last EP (“Strings”) when the world shut down. We couldn’t play any shows to promote the release, which was really frustrating. So we focused a lot on promoting the EP, and after a few months of isolation, we began writing again. In the midst of all of that, we began wondering if the mix for the “Strings” EP could be improved upon, which became the biggest focus for us in 2020.
How is Unstrung different from your previous releases? Were you trying to accomplish anything specific on this new project?
Well, with our self-titled EP, many of those songs were early reflections of our writing, and not really what we ultimately ended up sounding like after writing a few more songs. So to us, it comes across as incomplete or jumbled, and the mix has some issues with it, as well. With the “Strings” EP, we now consider the mix to be just awful, bordering on humiliating (to put it bluntly). However, we are still very passionate about all 5 songs, and felt they deserved a better mix. So the hope is by combining all of our best and most definitive songs from both EPs onto a single full length album with a consistent mix (that you can both hear AND feel), we would be able to have one album that truly defined our sound, rather than two EPs that are sort of flawed (in our eyes).
What was one of the biggest challenges during the process of creating the music on Unstrung?
Honestly the biggest struggle for us is that we can only get together once a week for about 3 hours, due to other life and time constraints. But we try and make the most of it.
Where is the best place to connect with you?
Social media! We’re on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook. Of course our website, www.hollowedsky.com is a good place to start, as well. You can find everything there. We’d also be thrilled if you’d follow us on Spotify, Apple Music, or whichever streaming service you use!
Anything else before we sign off?
Thanks for the interview! We hope anyone reading this will check out “Unstrung.” We (still) like turtles.
