Getting to Know… holon | Interview

In the 450^th Q&A in our Getting to Know… series, we get the inside scoop from the Norwegian musical project, holon by Ronny Pedersen.

“Well, the same thing that makes each person unique is applicable to their music, I guess.” That is deep and quite insightful, holon! Ronny Pedersen, the brainchild of the musical project, expounds, “We are all a product of our genetics and our experiences in this world. That will propagate into the music that we make.” If that response, excerpted from one answer to one question, is not enough to whet your palate from a musician’s interview, then I don’t know what is!  Pedersen gives us inside scoop on the holon’s genesis, goals, musical influences, current, and future musical endeavors. So, without further ado, let’s jump into the intriguing Getting to Know… holon: Interview No. 450!

For those who may not be familiar with you, what would you say makes holon distinct or unique? How do you rock the audience’s socks off?

Well, the same thing that makes each person unique is applicable to their music, I guess. We are all a product of our genetics and our experiences in this world. That will propagate into the music that we make. Personally, I think you could hear traces from lots of my influences in my music. What makes me stand out could be that I am quite open to getting into new music – no matter what genre. I have personally evolved from listening to pop to rock to prog-rock to jazz/fusion to world music and so on. As long as the music hits me – be it a nerve that hits me on the emotional level or some smart or virtuous moment that hits me intellectually – then I don’t care about the genre. I think this is reflected in my music as well and is my unique fingerprint musically.

Okay, let’s explore some juicy backstories. How did holon form, and what were some of your goals or visions early?

The holon project came into being as a necessity after having been playing and writing music in various bands that eventually got to a standstill or broke up. I felt that I had so much music in me that I just needed to take matters into my own hands and release songs as a solo project. I really had some doubts that I was good enough, but after meeting fellow musician Rhys Marsh who owns and runs a studio, Autumnsongs Recording Studio, in Trondheim where I live – he told me he liked the songs and he agreed to help produce my first record, The Time is Always Now which also was released on his label. This was an album where I got lots of guest musicians in to help make the record as good as possible. The main goal for me eventually has become the process more than the end product. I really find joy in the creative process – learning about all aspects of music production, and even in creating visuals that go alongside your music. The vision now is to be a self-reliant producer of music doing the whole process from writing, recording, playing, mixing, mastering mostly myself. I have even built a studio in my house where I can record everything. Then, when I work on music I don’t stop working on it until I feel proud of it and really like it myself. That is the ultimate satisfaction for me. If others like it, that is just a bonus. I am very much driven by inner reward. Probably not a very good setup for making money or getting famous

Let’s talk more about goals.  Have your goals or your perspectives changed since starting? What do your aspirations or goals look like now?

I think they might have changed a bit. When I started with my ‘holon’ project, the goal was being able to create something from my songs together with quite a few people that could help me along the way to just get my music recorded and distributed out there. Now the goal is to be able to be rather self-sufficient. Also, musically I can see that I am growing and I am trying to challenge myself on improving all aspects of the chain from songwriting, arrangement, mixing to mastering. My goal has never been world domination. I do exhibit enough self-awareness to realize that the audience-potential of my music is limited – given that it will probably be a bit challenging for some people. I do have songs that are “easier” on the ear though and I have always been a sucker for melodies and good songwriting – so maybe I can grab the attention of some that way and pull them into my world

The main goal now is to have fun creating music, while growing and learning as a musician. As one of my biggest idols, Frank Zappa said: “Without music to decorate it, time is just a bunch of boring production deadlines or dates by which bills must be paid.” You have to find something in this life that you enjoy doing and that fills your time. Music is one of these things for me. So maybe not as much a goal as a general philosophy.

Everybody is influenced by somebody else. Whom would you consider some of your biggest musical influences, and how are they influential?

In my music I do not think you can strongly hear single pinpointable influences, but rather it would probably be a large melting pot of influences – far too many to mention here. When it comes to the guitar playing, I have always been a huge fan of the percussive, muted sound of Nuno Bettencourt from Extreme (which I by the way think he somehow got some inspiration on from my fellow Norwegian guitarist Ronnie LeTekrø) – his sense of rhythm and the virtuosity in the guitar playing always blew my mind –

and to add to that, he is also a fantastic songwriter and a great singer. I even bought one of his signature models when I was a teenager. That was my second guitar ever. I think what I have taken from him might be some of that muted percussive playing as well as not being afraid of experimenting with longer and more concept-like songs – as I listened a lot to Extreme when I was younger. Of course, as I was into prog rock and had Dream Theater as my favorite band for a long time, I also loved John Petrucci, and we both also have a common hero in Steve Morse. The latter showed that you could blend genres and make something new which has been really inspiring for me.

Another one that inspired me, not only because of his blazingly fast playing, was guitarist John McLaughlin. His work with his group Shakti really opened my ears to Indian folk music which you might be able to hear in some of my music.

I could go on and on here, but I think I need to limit myself. One last influence I want to mention is Frank Zappa. His influence might not be very prominent in my music, but I was kind of obsessed with his music after I first saw the video “Zappa’s Universe”, which my stepfather had borrowed from a friend of his on VHS. I started devouring some of the records and it really fascinated me how much I liked this music. Especially these idiosyncratic instrumental melodies that were nothing like I ever heard before.

Ah, the fun stuff.  What’s your craziest tour story or the wackiest thing that’s happened during a performance?  Feel free to be creative.

Being mostly a studio project there hasn’t been much live performances with my holon project. I have played a few live concerts with just me and my acoustic guitar, but not much wackiness happening. Yeah, I know – quite a boring answer here I am afraid.

I can mention a funny story that happened during one of my backpacking trips through India though. Even if it does not involve my holon project as such. Me and my travel companion were both traveling with our guitars and we got on a train heading for Varanasi I believe. We had bought tickets with reserved seats and could not find our coach and the train was leaving the station so we just had to jump on it. You could not go from coach to coach from the inside so every stop we went out and to the next coach. Eventually we came to the last coach of the train which turned out to be the disabled coach. Once inside there we just gave up on finding our seats and we just decided to stand in that coach for the rest of the three hour trip. We later found out that this train was the train from yesterday that was almost 24 hours delayed Anyway, inside the disabled coach people were piling up around as there were no real seats but only some beds and lots of floor space. It turns out people that were sneaking on the train normally opted for this coach. We were standing upright with our backpacks, while lots of Indian people were sitting around us, and most were not really disabled. Eventually one of the Indian guys saw that we had guitars with us and said in a very Indian accent, “Can you play ‘Hotel California’?” We then got our guitars out and started playing for the people in there to great success. After we had played some songs a drunk Indian in the crowd wanted to give something back and started singing some Indian folk songs to us. Craziest train ride of my life and probably qualifies as wacky I would say I must also mention that the coach was so crowded that when one of the actual disabled people had to go to the toilet, which was on the opposite side of the cart, people had to “crowd surf” him over their heads and over to the toilets. What a crowd!

To this point in your career, what would you describe as your favorite song you’ve recorded or performed live? What makes that song special?

What is my favorite song of the recorded ones will change all the time. Now I am quite happy with the last single I released called “Samsara”. It is the first song from the upcoming album Love & Behold that will come out later this year. It is about the end of my marriage that happened some years back. Also, some of it was inspired by the death of my father – so it is not a happy song for sure, but it is important to me.

Is there anything else awesome, cool, or left-of-center we should know about holon? Secret talents or surprising tidbits?

I am a nerd that loves gadgets and all things that you can control using your phone or computer. I spend quite a bit of time in front of a computer with my projects, be it setting up and programming my home automation system, doing my actual day job or tending to technical matters around being an artist such as web programming, making guitar pedals and so on. I have a masters degree in electrical engineering so I have always been interested in learning how things work. When I was younger, I often took stuff apart to try to understand how it worked – often ending up breaking them, I must admit. I think my approach to music has been similar. I started out spending lots of effort into finding out how music works reading through music theory on my own. I never really had any music lessons so I am completely autodidact when it comes to music. This was the time before youtube so you had to read up, learn from friends or buy VHS tapes with music lessons – I guess I am giving away my age now

I could add that In my day job, which I must admit mostly finances my musical endeavors, I work on designing GPU hardware that is used in mobile phones, TVs and other electronics out there today that is in need of an energy efficient GPU. I think that is a pretty cool job myself!

What is holon currently working on or promoting that you can share? We love secrets, but there’s no pressure. 

As I mentioned before I am about to release a new album, Love & Behold. This is a concept album with songs and stories taken from my own life. This is from the period in my life where my marriage ended and I suddenly found myself out there searching for love again. This sets the theme of the album. To find out how it goes you have to follow my releases this year I can reveal that there is lots of music, and I even have to split this over a two part album. The first part is recorded and just doing the finishing touches. The plan is to release one song at a time until the whole album is out. I guess that is the current trend now that streaming and digital distribution is predominant and there is no added cost by releasing singles. Hopefully it can also keep the attention going in this day and age where it is hard to hold people’s attention.

Thank you so much for sharing and taking the time to answer these questions, and best of luck moving forward. 

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Getting to Know…holon: Interview No. 450 [: Brent Faulkner / The Musical Hype; Endre Forbord; holon]