Hailing from Tennessee, Nox Holloway were undergrads turning lemons into lemonade during the pandemic, recording remotely from their home studios in Nashville and South Carolina, as well as London during their time studying abroad.
A perfect musical partnership, one half of the duo is a producer, while the other is a songwriter, lyricist, and vocalist who is as likely to find inspiration strumming his ukulele as he’s in the flow of hip hop by his idols. Together they realised that they had all the skills needed to write the kind of songs that previously only existed in their imaginations.
To celebrate the release of new single ‘Audrey’, I managed to send over some questions to this enigmatic outfit to get to learn more about their process…
For those who have yet to hear your music, how would you describe it?
We like to call our music ‘alt pop’ as a general description, but we talk all the time about making a statement with our musicality and delivery while maintaining catchy hooks and overall accessible songs. Ideally, our work can be easily enjoyed by anyone, but we also want to satisfy those who will take a deeper dive.
You worked remotely from your home studios during the pandemic. Do you think that this process made an impact on the way that your sound was formed?
Absolutely. Working remotely meant a lot of asynchronous work in our rooms alone. We think that this time honing our respective crafts individually only upped the product as we recorded and finished songs over FaceTime together. There’s much more experimentation and detail orientation when you’re alone in a room, so the remote work really let us explore as individuals what we like and how we want to sound as Nox Holloway.
What inspirations do you take when writing your music?
We draw a lot of inspiration from film. This was pretty on the nose with ‘Audrey’ but there are some more subtle nods to the big screen in what we have coming. Also, with some visual art and our favourite albums, we love how immersive artistic expression can be, so we try to create music and sonorities that one can get lost in. Beyond that, we keep a pretty close eye on charts and metrics to see if there’s any music blowing up that is especially inspiring to us.
Who are your current favourite new artists?
The newer artists we love are Jack Harlow, Dominic Fike, Olivia Rodrigo, Jack Kays, Petey, The Kid LAROI, and Billie Eilish. Is she still considered new?
Who would your dream collaboration be with, and why?
I think for the both of us our dream collab is with Jon Bellion. He was an artist we bonded over when we first met, and his process and passion as related to his music and artistry have provided us with endless amounts of inspiration and wisdom.
What does the rest of the year have in store for you?
We’re going to continue to release new music and videos. Later in the year I’d imagine we’ll start to discuss live shows, and we’re constantly writing and recording new songs. Hopefully there are some more great Q&A’s like this along the way too! Thanks for great questions!
New single ‘Audrey’ is out now, and the debut EP will be released imminently.