Today, guitarist, songwriter and producer Scott Holiday releases ‘Topology‘, the debut album from his new solo project HOL1D4Y, via Sacred Tongue Recordings / Thirty Tigers.

“I’m so happy to finally put my debut album “Topology” out into the world and share it.” states Scott Holiday. “This record is particularly personal and close to my heart. As with all records, it’s a process. Some albums I’ve made have been pretty arduous, filled with debate and ideas from many different directions. We’ve made a joke that it is difficult, like birthing a child. ‘Topology‘ was more flowing and came quick and without strain…like releasing a valve. It’s certainly the most focused and reflective of my own vision of anything I’ve ever created or worked on. It was as vulnerable, revealing and challenging as it was inspired, focused and exciting to create. It was mine – now it’s ours. I hope you enjoy it.”

Alongside the full album comes a new video for opening track ‘Holotropic‘, another step deeper into the psychedelic, cinematic world Holiday has been building around the project where there are visuals to accompany every track. Holiday states: “‘Holotropic‘ is a performance video very much in the mood of the first two videos but including the full band.” In addition to Scott Holiday on guitar, bass and vocals it features: Michael Miley on drums, Jesse Nason on Keys and Aaron Danks on guitar and Aaron Eisenberg as a multi-instrumentalist and visual director who has also created all the videos and visuals for ‘Topology‘ with Scott through his company Sound and Vision Co.

‘Holotropic‘ brings several of ‘Topology‘s central ideas together in one place. Against fuzzed-out guitars, vintage synths and a deeply locked-in groove, the lyrics move through shifting color, unwinding time, astral wandering, Paramatma, and the strange experience of seeing yourself from outside your usual point of view. It also circles back to the ‘Veridream‘ introduced earlier in the album campaign, linking the record’s recurring interest in dreams, altered perception and the different versions of ourselves that become visible when our perspective shifts.

Those questions sit at the center of ‘Topology‘. Holiday found the album’s title in the branch of mathematics concerned with forms that can stretch, bend and transform without losing their essential nature. Rather than making a record about mathematics, he took that idea somewhere much more personal: what remains intact when a person is reshaped by experience?

That question became especially real while the album was taking shape. ‘Topology‘ began as a largely instrumental project, growing from a daily practice in which Holiday would enter his home studio and write a new fragment each day – a riff, melody, rhythm or texture – without worrying about where it would lead. Over time, those fragments began revealing a shared language built around psychedelic experimentation, atmosphere, groove and sound.

Then Holiday was hit by a car while riding his bike home after an evening with friends. The accident left him with six broken ribs, a serious shoulder injury, a head injury and weeks of recovery. Forced into an unfamiliar stillness, he kept developing the unfinished music in his head, and something changed.

“What surprised me was that they stopped feeling like instrumental pieces,” Holiday says. “They started asking for a story. Once I realized that, the words just started pouring out as a stream of consciousness. That’s when I knew I wasn’t looking for someone else to sing these songs – I needed to be the one to tell the story.”

For the first time in his career, Holiday became the lead voice on his own recordings. The accident did not create the music, but it changed the way he understood it. Recovery became less about returning to who he had been and increasingly about following the new artistic identity the songs were pointing toward.

That idea of transformation runs across the album’s nine tracks. ‘Panoptic‘, ‘Metacognition‘, ‘Equanimity‘, ‘Autonomatic‘, ‘Veridream‘ and ‘Holotropic‘ approach perception from different angles, while instrumentals “Constellations,” “CRISM” and “Love of Separation” leave space for listeners to enter the record on their own terms. As Professor Dylan Trigg, Senior Researcher at the Department of Philosophy at Central European University in Vienna, writes in his accompanying essay Topology: The Invisible Geometry of the Heart, the album is concerned with “the hidden unity within an apparently knotted world,” connecting topology with healing, longing, separation, technology and the mind and spirit.

Sonically, ‘Topology‘ lives somewhere between psychedelic rock, progressive exploration, experimental pop and cinematic alternative music. Holiday handles guitar, bass, vocals and percussion and produced the record himself at his home studio. Longtime collaborator and Rival Sons drummer Michael Miley supplies the album’s drums, much of them originating as improvised performances that Holiday cut and reshaped into the foundations of the songs. Jesse Nason adds layers of vintage Moog, Mellotron, Oberheim and Prophet synthesizers, giving the record another dimension alongside Holiday’s fuzz-heavy guitars.

The album arrives with strong early momentum behind HOL1D4Y. Classic Rock / Louder called ‘Topology‘ “highly recommended,” describing ‘Autonomatic‘ as “a riffy, cinematic trip into the desert,” while Music-News praised the record for sitting “somewhere between psychedelic rock, progressive pop, and cinematic alternative music without settling comfortably into one category.” On Stage Magazine highlighted the way the music balances a “cerebral” concept with “strong drum groove, layers of warm analog sound, melodic guitar details”, while VISIONS gave Topology a 9/12 review.

HOL1D4Y also extends beyond the recordings themselves. Holiday conceived each song with its own visual language, treating videos, photography, artwork and even custom-built instruments as parts of the same larger world. ‘Holotropic‘ continues that approach, following the videos for ‘Veridream‘ and ‘Autonomatic‘. “One painting tells you an idea,” Holiday says. “A catalogue of paintings tells you what the artist was really after.”

Recorded and self-produced at Holiday’s home studio, ‘Topology‘ is ultimately a record about looking deeper. Aligning ourselves through introspection and observation. Waking ourselves and raising our antennas to reconnect to our original nature.

“The beautiful thing about art is that it doesn’t need to be one thing,” Holiday says. “We all have a personal relationship to a song, so it takes on its own meaning. There’s a clear personal message I’m giving – and from that point the listener can personalize the experience for themselves.”

‘Topology‘ is out now via Sacred Tongue Recordings / Thirty Tigers.

Stream / Purchase Topology (USA) – here

Stream / Purchase Topology (UK/EU) – here

Track List:

A Side

1. Holotropic
2. Panoptic
3. Veridream

B Side

1. Autonomatic
2. Constellations
3. Metacognition

C Side

1. CRISM

D Side

1. Equanimity
2. Love of Separation

Line-up:

Scott Holiday — Guitar, Bass & Vocals

Jesse Nason — Synth

Michael Miley — Drums

Web Links:

Official Website

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