Hollow & Akimbo will play Taste of Kalamazoo on Saturday night at 8 p.m.
The members of the Ann Arbor band could be called production perfectionists. They released their first full album in February and even took the time to record their half of our interview from Ann Arbor.
Singer and bassist Jonathan Visger does some electronic mixing for the band. He says with all of the digital tools available, it can be difficult to know when a song is finished.
"You're putting ever sound under the microscope and agonizing over every half second of music and what it all means and how it ties together," Visger explains. "And then you take it out in the real world and you realize that it mostly just matters if the groove connects with people and the emotion is something that people are going to want to have you share with them. And so we've kind of come to realize that it's done when, every time you put it on, you just feel good and get excited."
Hollow & Akimbo have even let other artists take a stab at mixing their tracks. For their EP Singularity, several artists that share their local record label Quite Scietific were invited to remix the song.
Brian Konicek does guitar, keyboard, and backup vocals for the band. He says sending your song off to someone you often don't know, and might not have the chance to talk to, can be a little nerve racking. But Konicek says the results are fascinating.
"You're sending these basic files of the track that you've recorded and you've put in your heart into and time and energy. And giving them a vocal and giving them a drum track and they're completely re-imagining it through their world and their lens," he says.
Visger says he gets most of his inspiration from those everyday sounds that just have something special about them - or at least the potential to be special.
"Anything - just an interesting bowl getting hit with a spoon. And you can turn that into an entire song itself just by manipulating the audio," he says. "And so that's kind of what I mean, you live your life and you're surrounded by sound all the time."
