“Sleep” is your debut single as Hollow Stare. Can you share more about the creative process behind this track and how it evolved from an instrumental piece to a full-fledged song?
Daniel: When I started out making music I originally just made large instrumental songs, being heavily inspired by Bulb and Plini. Even with music I write that has lyrics, I have carried over the habit of making, mixing, and producing the entire song as an instrumental song first and then sending it over to Ben. Usually I’ll make a couple of tracks and Ben will either approve or veto them and the ones that get approved, Ben takes and does his magic on. Once he’s finished writing the lyrics and recording he’ll send me the stems and I’ll do a finalized mix for the song. In the future we want to craft the instrumental portions of the songs together though. The physical distance between us at the moment makes that pretty difficult as it stands unfortunately.
Your music blends intense emotions like anger and melancholy. How do you channel these feelings into your songwriting and production, particularly in “Sleep”?
Daniel: Thematically, this is a question for Ben since he decided on what the song was about and wrote the lyrics. In terms of production, I usually cook these songs up as instrumental tracks and throw them to Ben after which I’ll listen to the lyrics and general vibes he’s going with and double-down on it in the post-production process whether that being automated FX in different segments of the song, ambient synths, you name it. Every song asks for its own thing. The key to being a good producer, although in this case I think engineer is a better term, in my opinion is understanding what the song and artist are asking for and being able to give it to them.
Both of you have extensive backgrounds in music, with Daniel’s production experience and Ben’s history with UnderSociety. How did your past experiences influence the creation of Hollow Stare and your debut single?
Daniel: For me I spent 20 straight years being educated in music and audio engineering. I had finally graduated with my master’s degree and I had the experience and know-how to do something real, and that’s what inspired me to start an indefinite project with Ben. I knew I didn’t want to do it alone and I love Ben’s aggressive approach to vocals, plus we’ve been friends for a while now and it just made sense to do this with him. Sleep kind of came from the excitement of doing the idea I think. It isn’t just our debut release, but also the first track we made together to test the waters for Hollow Stare as a project and it went really well, so we’ve followed through. I thought it was particularly interesting because Hollow Stare blends my progressive rock and Ben’s deathcore approaches to metal into a really unique sound.
The music industry can be challenging to navigate, especially for emerging artists. What are some of the biggest obstacles you faced while creating and releasing “Sleep,” and how did you overcome them?
Daniel: Challenging is an understatement I think, because it can also be really volatile. Everyone knows music is super oversaturated and cutthroat, I mean the “starving artist” has been a stereotype for a very long time. I think there’s a newer challenge that has stacked on top that only people who are emerging artists releasing their first songs are really aware of and that’s the introduction of scam artists leaking out of the walls. The global economy is faltering and now more than ever, musicians are desperate. With social media and streaming devaluing music to being almost worthless, AI replacing the need for musicians and engineers in general, the overwhelming difficulty to bring in revenue from your art, and of course the oversaturation, success feels like something that is impossible outside of nepotism circles. It’s not impossible, but it’s insanely difficult and requires a lot of funding and time dedication that not everyone has access to, and that’s an unfortunate reality. Because of that, musicians, producers, engineers, and just about everyone else in the music industry have become desperate, and scammers smell desperation. It’s an open hunting ground for them, and that only serves to make everything more difficult. The way I’ve found my way around this is test the waters in every avenue I can, figure out my strengths and weaknesses, what does work, and what doesn’t work, and lean into what does. I’ve realized I’m no good at the social media stuff, so I’m not going to focus on that. Instead I’ve realized our music can stand for itself and thus researching and hiring some really good A&R and PR teams has been one of the best trustfalls I’ve taken. Getting our music in front of people and easily accessible has generally been enough to get their interest, so the trick was getting it in front of people in an easily digestible manner: radio, playlists, streaming app campaigns, etc.
“Sleep” addresses the theme of sleep paralysis, which is quite unique for a deathcore track. What inspired you to explore this topic, and how do you hope listeners will connect with the song’s message?
Daniel: This is more a question for Ben since he writes the lyrics, but I think what inspired this song to be about Sleep Paralysis in the first place was that I had titled the instrumental version of the song “Sleep” already, and Ben just ran with that. That story is not the same for our other songs but it’s how it seems to have worked out for our debut release.