by Giliann Karon (@lethalrejection)
This past October, I left Washington, D.C. after seven years. I arrived when I was eighteen to attend American University, then stayed for three years after I graduated in 2020. In the year leading up to my move, I found it increasingly difficult to assimilate among the power-hungry careerists. Despite all the universities that call DC their home, it’s not a college town. Students and professors don’t unilaterally control culture and commerce. Instead, academia and everything else exist outside the dominant industry – government.
Our daily life is impacted by who’s in power and the decisions they make. We often participate. I wasn’t the only one who attended my political science classes during the day, shilled at my internship, and then wondered if everything was really worth it for this dying world. I’d show up to my non-profit gig a little stoned from the night before. So did everyone else.
Ekko Astral gets me. Punk has never existed as its own entity in DC. It’s always in conflict and conjunction with the dominant political landscape. Their lyrics ideate this dissonance, disgust, and confusion, all while embodying the rich DIY scene that molded me and so many young people before and after.
Singer/guitarist/journalist Jael Holzman never hesitates to call out the profiteers and architects of this apocalypse, but guides listeners towards solutions rooted in community care. Joined by Miri Tyler, Guinevere Tully, Sam Elmore, and Liam Hughes, their music ushers in advocacy, optimism, and plans for a brighter tomorrow.
Ekko Astral is the next generation of a lively scene among the likes of Fugazi, Minor Threat, and Bad Brains. Their debut album Pink Balloons points the middle finger at a machine whose oil is marginalization and murder, all while providing a place for everyone under the boot. We can cry and mourn, but we can’t lose hope.
photo credit: John Lee
GILIANN KARON: DC has a prolific and well-documented hardcore punk scene. How does Ekko Astral carry that legacy?
JAEL HOLZMAN: In the history of DC punk, there’s always been this dissonance. The thriving punk culture always exists within the subaltern of the ruling class that sits in not just the power structure, but the city’s business. The coffee shops in DC exist for people who work on K Street and in the White House.
DC punk has always been on the outside. You go to your day job and then you go to the pit. Historically, the subaltern has not been fully represented in music from DC. We’re carrying forward what it feels like to be from the lower and from the oppressed within this community itself. People who are dealing with shit and also have to drive by the CIA on their way to work.
MIRI TYLER: DC is the legacy when it comes to music, Bad Brains and Fugazi. For them, it wasn’t just about the music. It was about the ethos of their shows and how they incorporated the community, encouraged people to look out for one another, and really projected these community values into punk music. We try to do the same.
GK: Can you talk about your moniker of “mascara mosh pit” music, especially as it pertains to this great wave of queer and trans musicians in the DC DIY scene?
JH: When I look into our pits, I see a crowd that is actually representing femininity as well as masculinity. It flexes androgyny. We wanted to find some sort of way of describing our sound that spoke to what it feels to be inclusive.
GUINEVERE TULLY: Mascara mosh pit is for the dolls but not just for the dolls.
GK: Obviously you can’t separate your music from your transness. How do you keep your identity and collective liberation at the forefront while still writing songs for a general audience?
JH: We used to make music explicitly about the queer experience. But we realized that if we want people to understand what we’re trying to do, it’s far more important to universalize it.
We center the experience of the oppressed within our music. We are queer people, some of us in this band, but our music is also about Indigenous folks. It's about folks who are struggling, who are at their absolute lowest. Our music is speaking from the position of one of absolutely a bajillion kinds of identities that are under the boot right now.
It’s also really important to note, sonically, how dissonance and low end frequencies and fuzz, can actually convey affect. You can communicate that absolute dissonance within the self through sound.
GT: If you’re good at it, it hits both. I’m a strong believer in intersectionality. Even if it doesn’t cater to me, I can still empathize with it and learn from it. It’s really about being authentic and the right people will pick up on that.
JH: We try really hard not to see this as a competition. So often, music is seen as a competition, but in DC especially, it's not seen as that. Whenever we bring acts in, everyone is always surprised to see how the DC queer community in the arts is really open to anyone.
We're building bridges and networks. That's how we're getting bands like Anita Velveeta, Crush Fund, into our community and trying to build a movement for everyone by queer people, for fucking everyone.
GK: Explain the story behind your band’s name.
JH: “I'm in Jimmy Page's castle/I'm off the planet, echo astral”
When I was really young, I was a huge Death Grips fan. I had the censored version of No Love Deep Web as my cell phone lock screen.
Later in life before I came out as trans, I was at a music festival where I had this divine moment in the portapotty. I had a vision of me performing in a dress under the name Ekko Astral, and it just hit me really hard. When I approached Liam to start a band, I knew it had to be called that because it would be rooted in that experience.
GK: What about Death Grips moves you enough to reference their lyrics in your band’s name?
JH: I wouldn't say that that's what we built our whole aura around. It was more about the lyric than the band. I’m a big Death Grips fan, but it had nothing to do with them or their music. I love the idea and the image of an echo careening across space and time.
Our music is especially loud. We have three guitars, we scream, we shout, we jump around, and I love the idea of this sonic wave booming across space and time.
GK: Congrats on signing to Topshelf! How has their guidance and community helped you pinpoint your aesthetic and develop your sound?
JH: Topshelf, to me, represents the best that punk, emo, and hardcore can offer. The music that Topshelf puts out into the universe represents what the current wave of culture should be.
It's not a label that’s trying to define itself by other people. That's why over the years it has expanded beyond simply punk music to other kinds of genres. It’s one of my favorite labels. I was a huge fan of their releases growing up. I'm really proud they was willing to stick their neck out there in the middle of SXSW and say, we're gonna throw an anti-South by showcase in front of City fucking Hall.
MT: Adding to that specific experience of the showcase, it made me feel like we were in such good company.
GK: What about the DC music scene inspires your songwriting?
JH: As a DC shitbag elite, our music comes from the brain of perhaps one of the most rotten minds. I’m acutely aware of how the Beltway creates this cultural bubble where a lot of people think that the world is something that it absolutely isn't.
It's defined by psyops and smart communication strategists trying to ruin everyone's lives. We are trying to not just represent what DC punk is today, but also what it feels like to live in DC today, where if you’re someone who’s not that one kind of person, you’re constantly inundated at all times by symbols of what your terrible future represents.
We have this one track on the record called “somewhere at the bottom of a river between l'enfant and eastern market.” The track itself is actually a poem by the activist Ari Drennan, who is a close friend of mine. The poem wraps through the record. It's about that really disgusting and eerie feeling when you're at dinner with your friends and you say one of the many terrible things happening and someone goes, “we’re at dinner, let’s just have fun here.”
MT: Like Jael, I was born and raised in the DC area, but I don’t have the experience of being on Capitol Hill. I can speak to the experience of taking the bus to work my minimum wage job every day. It’s a very different world and all these worlds exist within the Beltway. What’s happening in DC doesn’t represent DC’s culture.
SAM ELMORE: There’s a growing disconnect within people in DC between how you actually feel and see vs. the things that you're supposed to feel and see. A big part of the record is exploring this disconnect. It seems to be coming to a head. What we all kinda know is happening is coming to light.
JH: It's unfortunate that people don't put Fugazi and Rico Nasty in the same breath. There's a reason that a lot of DC artists, whether they're making rap, go-go, or punk, convey this malaise and angst about the world at large.
GK: I get it! I just moved to New York after seven years in DC. It was always nice to shut my computer for the day and go to a show with people who understood that disconnect.
JH: As a media professional, I’m often told I’m not allowed to say what I really think. I don’t think Ekko even does that, we just say how we feel. It sucks to be constantly inundated with the world’s worst news.
That doomerist mindset only concentrates power in the hands of those who already have it. The way forward is together. That's what Ekko promotes. We come from this perspective, knowing and understanding. That's what Pink Balloons is about. We're making music for the future. We need a culture that actually advocates for a better future and is optimistic about this vision, as opposed to this empty nonsense that we're living through.
GK: What’s your favorite kind of venue to play in?
JH: We like to play in rooms where people move.
GT: If the flier says “no one turned away for lack of funds,” that’s where I want to play.
LIAM HUGHES: I really like playing sober spaces. I’m not sober myself, but there’s always a bigger focus on the music. There’s an all ages sober venue in my hometown and it’s gotten really popular with the kids. That wasn’t a thing when I was growing up so I’m glad it’s available for them.
SE: A place with a good monitoring system so I can hear myself.
GK: What song on Pink Balloons challenged you the most?
JH: Definitely ‘i90,” which is a departure from the sound we usually aim for. I wrote this song as a tribute to our dear momager, PR person, and my best friend, Jackie Codiga.
t’s about the dumb decision I made to drive from DC to Chicago in 2022 for Pitchfork Music Festival and as a trans person, not realizing I’d have to go through Ohio and Indiana. I never got out of my car there, even to go to the bathroom. I found myself thinking “what the fuck am I doing?” I got to Pitchfork, where Jackie introduced me to some great artists, which made me want to write a slowcore song.
On the drive back, I saw a bunch of Jesus billboards. I told my dad about it, who taught me how to play guitar and write music. He goes “‘swooped them up for Jesus/every billboard to Chicago,’ write that song!” And then right afterwards, I tested positive for COVID.
I started writing the song when I was stuck at home for a week. It started as a skeleton but we worked slowly over months. The narrative builds towards a genuine Hands Across America moment with us and Josaleigh Pollett, a queer artist based in Salt Lake City, Utah. We’re all singing the last lines of the Ari Drennan poem at a slow tempo in unison. It was definitely the most emotionally complex and introspective song that we have done so far.
Also, from a sonic perspective, we are a punk band, we're not a slowcore project. I do love TAGABOW, but we're not TAGABOW. We wanted to slow it down, and so we spent a couple hours in the studio trying to get that fucking groove. We were at 80 BPM and kept being like “drag it!”
GK: What did you watch and listen to while writing Pink Balloons?
JH: “I Think You Should Leave” and “Detroiters.” We almost named our song “devorah” “devereux,” which is a reference to Detroiters.
You haven’t asked about him yet, but we need to give a shoutout to our producer, our communist wizard. Jeremy fucking Snyder is the world's most underrated record producer. I genuinely hope this record gets him a lot of praise and acclaim. We inserted ourselves into a lot of culture he showed us in that experience, including Detroiters. He kept saying, “Ooh, Devereaux!” when we played “devorah.”
We recorded it at Fidelitorium Studios in Kernersville, North Carolina, which is owned by Mitch Easter, who produced for R.E.M. and Pavement. We all sat down and thought, “what do we wanna imagine as the future while we make this record? Who do we want it to help? What do we want it to accomplish?”
GK: Jael, you’re a self-described “Puthhead.” What about Charlie Puth’s music is so compelling?
JH: I think “Voice Notes” is one of the best pop records ever fucking made. I think that this guy understands songwriting and melody in a fashion that is savant level. If one day I get the chance to even hang out with him for a day, I hope at least 5% of his talent rubs off on me.