Photo Credit: Bethan Miller

We had the opportunity to catch up with bassist Ben Elliott from HOLDING ABSENCE before their performance on the Archetype Stage at the RADAR Festival. We delved into the band’s phenomenal year, their album ‘The Noble Art Of Self Destruction’, their dedicated fan base, and even uncovered some hidden Easter eggs.

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So, how’s it going?

Ben: It’s going great, yeah, things are really good.

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Are you guys looking forward to your set today?

B: Yes, yeah, absolutely. We all know as fans of small UK festivals, that this one and 2000 Trees are some of the best in the UK, so we’re really excited to play it. 

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Brilliant. Do you guys have any expectations for today?

B: Absolutely none whatsoever. I feel like the line-up is really varied and really contemporary and impressive, but I feel like we’re one of the more sorts of straightforward bands on today’s line-up, so we’re going to see if people can enjoy maybe a change of pace.

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You have had an absolutely incredible year. You’ve been to Dublin for the first time this year. You’ve done over 300 shows because you’ve been on tours non-stop back-to-back. How have you found that? Have you learnt anything from doing all of those tours?  

B: Do you know from touring so much; I think the main things we’ve learned is that we… Well, first things first, we’re super grateful to be able to have the chance to do it, and I think we’ve had a bit of a trial of fire since Covid ended, and we’ve just been out touring as much as possible. I think we’ve all learned that we are capable of it, and it is what we want to do for the rest of our lives. But speaking more plainly, just enjoying creature comforts, and we spend a lot of time stuck in bandwagons or on planes or in vans together, so we’re all completely cool now with splitting up and doing our own things and just following our noses, so to speak. 

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You currently have three albums. Do you have a direction in mind for the fourth album? Have you thought about the writing style and whether you want to explore different musical styles?

B: Yeah, absolutely. The first three albums were sort of considered a bit of a trilogy and that was basically us just really sort of cementing our sound in post-hardcore, and melodic hardcore, and us sort of going after the bands we all grew up listening to. We now feel like after three albums of that, it is time for us to sort of explore other influences. So, at the moment, we’re writing new songs, and we’re just not stopping ideas just because they might not be the most typical holding-absence thing you’ve ever heard before. Not to say that’s how it’s going to end up being on the album, but we’re just being a lot more open to a lot more different influences at the moment. Some of it, it’s like, we’re all obsessed right now with Porter Robinson.  

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Are there any influences you guys are listening to at the moment?

B: Collectively as a band, Porter Robinson, me and Lucas, the two of us, we love Purity Ring, we are huge fans of them. I feel like they’re like my cool little hipster indulgence amongst my social circle. It’s very moody and atmospheric, which I think is like Holding Absence. So, we’re all pulling from different directions, but collectively there’s maybe a bit more EDM sort of influence that’s like just being accepted right now. None of us are going to be trying to recreate, you know, club tracks or anything like that, but it’s funny and exciting to see how that can seep into a band’s set up and how our music comes together.  

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Lucas and Ashley said the writing styles are very mosaic, very pieced together. Would that be the same for the next album?  

B: Yeah. Everyone, Lucas and Scott, namely, write demos themselves and bring them to like a band writing session, and then I will sort of help them just I’ll just mainly collaborate a lot with what they write, to be honest, because they’re both very good at getting ideas out of nothing. And I like my strength really is to just sort of help them try new approaches and like just piece bits together. And it’s quite funny how often sometimes we’ll have a huge Dropbox folder with loads of like spares and repairs is what we call it. And like you’ll never know by the end of the album you might be thinking the verse from one demo actually suits another song. It’s huge, we basically upend a massive load of puzzle pieces. That the boys create. And then, like, yeah, we help just piece them all together and see how it’s all gonna flow and stuff like that. 

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That sounds like how my brain works. I always have little ideas and rough notes when I’m doing things, and then I think about them, leave them, reflect on other things, and then go back to them. And I’m like, actually, this fits here quite well.

B: Yeah, because and it’s not always like that. Sometimes like we have been in the studio before where songs almost written itself just because everything comes together so perfectly. But it’s not always like that. But also, we know how it feels like to stay up late one night writing a song and then wake up the next morning and just not enjoy it anymore. So, we make sure we really, like we really take a lot of time to process our demos to make sure they are actually something we’re quite happy with. So yeah, they get washed through a lot.

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Amazing. So, are there any, because obviously, your albums are kind of like a trilogy, Easter eggs in any of the albums that fans haven’t picked up on yet?

B: So yeah, there is on the special edition box set of the noble art. There was a very, very cool idea that our label, I’ll give Nick Azinas shout out, who’s the guy in charge of, like, sort of creating the products for us. He was able to make a seven-inch vinyl break out of a larger sort of placard, which suited the Kintsugi theme of the album.  We didn’t have a single or a song that we wanted to put on that seven-inch because we wanted the album to just be like a one play. So, we ended up creating a small atmospheric interlude, where our friend Mackenzie performed a poem on it. And that was sort of really sort of going with the flow energy. But we gave her a couple of sorts of directions to follow because it was sort of, yeah, it was sort of a bit of an epilogue to maybe the newer stuff. 

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Do you plan to continue with that theme for the next album, or do you think you’ll try something different for the next stage?

B: I actually think we haven’t decided yet. That’s like something that we haven’t got around to thinking about. 

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I know Lucas likes Everything, Everything. And obviously, with their new album, they’ve all dyed their hair blonde. They’ve been wearing very colourful colours.  

B: Yeah, I think it’s worked for us so far. So, I do think, you know, having a sort of uniform. Lucas’ wife, Lauren, is obviously a great clothing designer. So, it’s a bit silly for us not to. So, I’m sure it’s going to manifest itself in how we dress ourselves one way or another. But no idea what that is right now. 

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I really appreciate how you guys listen to the fans and take them into account, like with the special kind of merch. I don’t see many bands do that. So, was that everyone’s idea?  

B: Yeah, absolutely. It was obviously headed up by Lucas and Lauren because they were the ones who wanted to actually make the merch. But we all love the idea. We, funnily enough, I think it’s part of holding absences. Like success so far has been to like a dedicated fan base. We’ve been able to play in many places around Europe, and we’ve played to a lot of the same people who will follow the band. So, having an ear out and like try to actually like provide what they’re after is important to us because we don’t want to take that for granted. I think the guys knowing they can buy something that is a one-of-a-kind limited edition made by Lucas is sort of a great way of encapsulating all that.

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Yeah, it is like giving thanks back to the fans for all of their support.  

B: Yeah, so we’re going to keep doing it for as long as we can do it well. 

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That sounds amazing. So, this is a fun question. Who do you think is the biggest nerd out of everyone from Holding Absence?  

B: It’s definitely Lucas or Scott. Yeah, Lucas is like the cool nerd trend that’s going on now because he’s into anime and comics. And I think even he describes himself as a weeb because like he loves the Japanese culture and all that sort of stuff. So, he’s like the cool, definitely the cool nerd. Unfortunately for Scott, he’s the nerd nerd. He’s like the smart one in the band. He’s like super brain-boxy. He’s like always like sort of fiddling and doing stuff that goes completely over my head. Before our show in Dublin, he was like re-soldering a wire back together like 10 minutes before we had to like, soundcheck and stuff. So, he’s like he’s like the brain box. So, it’s between those two. It depends which train of thought you’re looking at it. 

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Last question: If Holding Absence could collab with anyone on the RADAR lineup, who would you guys collab with?  

B: That’s a great question. That’s really cool. Selfishly, I want to collab with Dirty Loops because I absolutely love them. But I wouldn’t be able to participate in that because I’m the bassist, and I’m going to step out of that scenario. But hearing Lucas sing on a Dirty Loops song would be really fun. I think Scott doing a feature with Humanity’s Last Breath. I would absolutely love that.  But I’m going to say Dirty Loops is my answer, though.

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Dirty Loops, I think that’s a great answer. Well, thank you so much for that.  

B: No worries. Thank you so much.