ghost: the hollow earth theory.

monday, october 14th 2024 • boston, massachusetts

more portraits can be found here.

“We are the hollowness of the Earth. We’re just in there.”

I want you to imagine something with me — you’re walking home from work, or school, or doing your usual mental health walk. You finally decided not to listen to the music you use to drown out the busyness of the 21st century. You take in the nature, the sounds around you: you feel at peace. But there’s a hum you don’t recognize; a sound that seems natural, but from deep in the planet. It interests you. It calms you. It excites you. It inspires you. That sound is Hollow Earth.

Hollow Earth is a band and idea that was born out of the creativity of 5 strong individual musicians that found each other amidst the chaos and clamor in the city of Boston. Coming from many different upbringings and musical backgrounds, the members of Hollow Earth have a unique way of bringing their different talents into one captivating project. The 5-piece band consists of vocalist Saade, drummer Quinn, bassist Kyesh, guitarist Deniz, and auxiliary instrumentalist VVN. I have the honor of calling these five musicians good friends, and count myself lucky to be able to have been at their first rehearsal as a group back in October of 2023. As well as their first ‘official’ show as Hollow Earth on July 26th of this year. On a cold and rainy fall night in October, I sat the five of them down to pick their brains for roughly an hour. I learned their music process, their hopes and dreams for the band, and everything in between…for better or for worse.

Hunter: Hey guys, nice to see you. Would you all mind stating your names and what instrument you play/do in the band?

Ezekiel: My name is Saade, I do the lead vocals.

Nathan: My name is Kyesh, I play the bass, I do the thing, I lay it down and sometimes I arrive on time.

Quinn: My name is Quinn, I play the drums for Hollow Earth. Yeah, I’m just glad to be here.

Deniz: I’m Deniz, I play the guitar. I make noises as well with the feedback and such.

Viv: And my name is Viv and I play auxiliary instruments but mainly the saxophone.

H: I think it’s definitely hard to categorize the type of music that you guys make, but what would you say if someone asked? Or, what would you say your biggest influences are music and what type of stuff do you guys pull from?

E: We were in the car yesterday and we all locked into a nostalgic ass session. I don’t think that the band particularly pulls from this but on a general note, Smino.

*all laugh*

Q: Mid to late 2010’s hip hop. That’s the shit.

D: And we also like jazz.

E: But if someone tried to put us on a bill…

V: Show Me The Body.

D: Someone last night at the Philly show said that they could see that we like Bad Brains and we do like Bad Brains. I also like Sonic Youth a lot.

V: And Dean Blunt.

D: And Velvet Underground.

E: And 2000s/early…anything off of The L Word soundtrack.

D: And anything that’s been in a Gregg Araki movie we probably like.

All: Jimrat.

H: So when did the band form and how did you all come together? I know that all of you knew each other before and would play some shows together, but how did Hollow Earth come about?

E: I got booked for a show last year and I was so tired of just performing with just a track behind me. I think I was talking to somebody…I think that Nathan was lowkey the one that was like ‘what if you performed with a band?’ Then I talked to Deniz about it. We already had the core living with us or talking to everyday. Quinn lives with Deniz, I lived with Nathan and then Viv was always just around because that’s just the homie. We didn’t have to go out and search for people because we make music and are just around each other. So I would say October of last year.

H: Yeah, like the first iteration was, what? The Friends of Allston Halloween show?

All: Yea!

N: Spooky band! 

E: Did we even do a first rehearsal before the show?

H: You did one, I was there for that actually. There was one in the practice rooms where I met Quinn for the first time.

N: Oooooh, yea.

D: That was also the very first time that I played guitar with a band ever. And to play guitar to be honest. 

E: That’s I think how we formed. Before it was like ‘Untitled Band’ and ‘Saade and It’s Band.’

H: Yea, like how did the name Hollow Earth come about?

E: We played like three shows as ‘Saade and It’s Band’ and we had a show at God’s Country. Nathan pep-talked the fuck out of me before. Like three hours. We only really rehearsed that day and Nathan was “yo, what if we took this seriously? I’ve been telling Zack to take the band seriously, look how far we can go with that. The potential.” In that moment, for me, something just clicked in and I was like “you’re so right.”

D: I think also around that time everything coalesced all together. We started the band out of a fun way but after that first show we realized it could be something cool like that. I think it took some time to realize it ourselves. But then it kind of all happened at once and everyone had their own revelation about it and how we can make it more than just a fun thing for us. If we just add some structure to it and think of it as an entire band instead of an extra thing for us to have as a show, we can do some things with it. And now we’re going out of state and it’s been like two fucking months.

E: If you want to say when Hollow Earth like really actually started you could say July 26th…Trompe-L’oeil.

D: And the name of the band came about because both Ez and I are both really into zines and just physical media in general. I had a zine in my collection that I wanted to show Ez I think it was a Carhart Work In Progress Edition. I was showing it to Ez and all of the sudden a small paper zine fell out of it. It  was a small black and white laser printed one and it was called ‘Hollow Earth Transmission’ and it was only a couple pages long. 

E: It just talked a lot about counter culture, especially this guy Brad Phillips who had this piece on what internet was like before..how the internet initially came in fruition and how it was used back then. How you had to dig for shit that you wanted to find and how that’s changed over time. I walked around reading ‘Hollow Earth Transmission’ for a whole month, just in my bag. There was a time where me, Quinn and Deniz had come up with the most hilarious names.

H: Like what?

D: Go back to Esteban Might Win.

E: Back to Esteban.

Q: They were all jokes lowkey. We would flip open a magazine and randomly point to a word and just combine the words and see what it made. We thought that Esteban Might Win was the funniest shit at the time. 

H: You guys should definitely make a song called that. 

Q: We honestly should.

D: Even our instagram handle @hollowearthcatalog is also a reference to the whole Earth Catalog from the 60s. Nowadays counter culture is being infiltrated a lot by global powers and shit like that and it’s a very strange time for youth culture. We think that physical media and just being able to not use it to consume the things you want to consume is cool and counter culture because you’re not being advertised it every second like you would be on your phone.

H: Do you guys have a specific goals for the remainder of 2024 as a group?

V: New York show.

D: A very good New York show.

V: I feel like I can say this speaking for everybody. The show we played in Philly…that venue is mainly a party scene for DJ’s and parties. College kids would go there to party and I think we could see that in the crowd. They were still fucking with us but it was very much ‘i’m here for any music.’ I think a goal I would have for this band is pulling up to New York or Philly and really speaking to people who are there to find new music and really fuck with us in that way.

E: And we have a very special person who is our booking manager now…they’re in the room with us. Dru. Legendary person. 

Q: I think that it would be much cooler to find an audience that resinates with what we do and to play for them. I feel like that’s the must fulfilling aspect. Like, it’s cool and all to play for just a general audience to have some fun. But I feel like finding the people that really resinate with the stuff we do would really make me feel more fulfilled with our performances.

D: Even then people say we have a really unique sound when we play to a general audience, so there might be something there. 

V: Us exploring music together. The band started with us playing Saade’s music. It’s an awesome experience to blossom out and to include us in way more than just us playing your music. I think with all our inspirations we can make music together that every single one of us poured into it and it feels different. And just explore the different things we can play together.

Q: I think we can take it different directions too. It doesn’t have to be post-punk related. Acoustic, stripped down. We can play Jazz standards for all I care. 

N: I really don’t have a whole lot of goals for 2024. I kind of go with the flow. If I’m asked to do something I’ll pull up, give it my all. So i’m just hoping to see the vision the collective of the band moves to. Any goals I would really have would be to spend more time with these goobers.

E: I think definitely the roadtrip down to Philly was a group bonding moment. We haven’t really spent a great amount of time outside of playing music together. Just existing as artists and our own people…the five hour drive to Philly was really a test.

D: Bro the seven and a half hour drive to Philly!

Q: It was definitely a nice bonding experience for us.

E: Making music together. We just have to find that time. Also, keeping it creative in everything we do across the board. I don’t want to promote on a boosted instagram reel or some shit. I hate that shit. It feels good where we’re at and we gotta just keep moving.

H: What gets you guys out of artist block as an individual?

Q: Honestly, for me this project has been really good at getting me out of artist block. I’m really hard on myself when I try to make things individually and I feel like playing with people and getting to know other artists and how they perceive their art and processes has been extremely helpful. And taking everything a lot less seriously. I find I take things way too seriously sometimes and it prevents me from creating anything. It’s a very fulfilling and eye opening experience being in this band. 

N: For me, a big part of it is finding self worth. It’s very difficult to create just in a vacuum and always have the only people who you work for never hear it because you’re self criticizing. Where a lot of my artist block comes from is lack of self worth. It’s not where the music is not good enough but where I’m not good enough for it. If I go to make anything that’s “bad” I’m dis-servicing the music and dis-servicing everything I’ve done beforehand. It’s this weird feedback loop where you listen to your old shit where it’s like “oh my god I was so good then and if I don’t immediately do something 10x, 100x better than this then what’s the point in me doing this.” 

D: I have to focus on staying healthy physically because if you’re in ‘arts’ a lot you forget to take care to eat, or take care of your mental health, or take care of the important things in your life. To me sometimes I don’t really see it as ‘artist block’ but just a reminder that maybe the life I’m living isn’t really the best or suitable to making profound art like we all would want to do. It’s like a wake up call to stop eating once a day and be nice to myself. Typically that ends up making your art better, because if it comes out of a healthy body then it’s healthy art. Not that there’s anything wrong with being depressed and making art, though!  *all laugh* You get depressed enough and it makes good art! You don’t want to try to get there though. 

Q: I feel like until I came to Berklee I didn’t have that many lived life experiences that shaped who I was. Now I actually feel like I’m doing things that can show and display who I am as a person and are building my character as a person. I was always worried about a young artist and getting into then and having to work on it. If you haven’t had those experiences or done cool shit how is anyone going to fuck with your art in general. Going on the Philly trip was a great character building experience. 

V: Don’t be too hard on yourself because I think a lot of the times everyones like ‘oh fuck I haven’t been making what I want, I can’t think of anything, I hate myself.’ The more you think about it the less you’re working on freeing yourself. Sometimes you just have to go out into the world and gotta do things on a whim, do things that make you uncomfortable and sometimes you gotta read a book, and sometimes you gotta put on Youtube and shuffle play videos and start on the Dean Blunt Boiler Room set and sometimes you’ll stumble upon something that inspires you. And sometimes you need to work in other mediums you don’t usually work in. Just explore. Making art is not always about putting out, putting out, putting out. You are a vessel of accepting new things.

E: I think in that way the ‘artist block’ is kind of a farce. In that way, for me everything ebbs and flows. I can go to Deniz’s house, make a song or write a bunch of shit. But if I’m feeling like ‘oh i’m clocked out of this, things aren’t coming to me’ I bounce to 20 other mediums. Bounce into life in someway more, bounce back into music. It’s like a pendulum I guess. I think that at core the way I operate as an artist is my process is very collaborative and always has been. SMFA really dinged that into me. Working with you [Hunter] and collaborating on different shoots in college. Working with Rowan aka Muutpoint all the time. God’s Country, Drew, Net, all the people that work there. It’s a constant line of reaching out instead of being insular. I think being insular can really lead to the artist block happening and staying there a while.

H: What song do you guys like performing the most?

N: I was going to ask this on the car ride!

Q: I really enjoy “Ghost.” I feel like it’s really different than the other songs we play. For the drum part, I’m doing something very different compared to the other songs. I feel like it has its own identity. Of course we start swinging at the end which I really love.

D: I love “Ghost,” I love playing guitar on it too. It’s so rhythmic the whole time, up until Viv and I trade solos and we get to just have fun and be stupid.

V: I think it’s probably one of the most interactive songs from our group. Especially since we added a separate part to the end of it that became jazz and punk. We were having fun and it sounded fun in rehearsal but it’s also a chance for the audience to be just like ‘BLAH!’ 

Q: I think it’s a very good showcase of the music we can make if we all use our own voices. “Ghost” is a song that was just written by Ez and Deniz.

D: That was the first punk song that I ever really wrote.

Q: We really reinvented it with all our own ideas. If we write more original music it’s just going to keep getting better. 

D: In that song, most of us are on vocals at some point. Ez is always on that, but Nathan and I scream around on that and I feel like Viv has done something in the past. I also really like “WHITEYONTHEMOON” as well, the guitar is so fun.

N: My favorite track is “Kill Me Anyways.” When we locked in on that shit, I don’t feel like any of the other songs really drive as hard. I don’t think any of them have as much raw aura *starts singing* 

D: Oh yeah, I can be so stupid on the guitar with that one. It’s so fun. 

N: When we really look in with that song, it feels like the most fun to play. 

D: What’s funny is that one can equally feel the worst to play if we aren’t on our shit. The real beauty of that song is the energy that we all add to such a simple form. When it’s not there it’s really quite a bland song. It’s all about how we play it and how we feel about how we play it. I think that really adds to extra little pieces that people like about it. 

E: Yea I would say “Kill Me Anyways” and “Ghost.” “WHITEYONTHEMOON” as well with that punk added in. Not even the punk part…*all imitating guitar riffs and beats*

Q: Every song has something great about it. I love “Missing Tooth Dreams” as well. I just really like the drum part, I think it’s the most different one out of the songs we have. I feel like it’s a nice break from the typical drum beats that I play. 

D: Damn we just put like our whole show and discography there. I really like “Masochist” too. It always feels really cool to me. We always try to do dramatic ass shit when we play that. At that show [Philly] we put fake blood in our mouths and dropped when the drums came in. I’m never doing that again though.

N: Bro I almost yacked.

Q: “Masochist” is also a very improvisable song which is really cool and I think that’s one of our strengths.

H: Viv, before you leave, remember when I asked you your desert island musician? What’s your current one?

V: Hmmm….now that it’s winter time I honestly have to say Dean Blunt and all of his forms and everyone that surrounds him musically. 

H: Yea, so the question I asked Viv, which I stole from my favorite movie, Green Room, is: desert island musician. It can change but if you were dropped off on a desert island right now and could only listen to one musician, who would you pick?

D: I have to say Lou Reed. Just Lou Reed, I’m very captivated by his life. 

Q: Honestly, it’s going to be a little cliche, but Robert Glasper. “In My Element”…I go back to that album all the time and listen it through and always find something new from that I love it. I’m a jazz drummer at heart and I love neo soul jazz music. So I would say Robert Glasper and everyone surrounding him.

N: Right now….I’ll say it the way he’d say it: KAYTRANADA. CLASSIC. TIMELESS. Love that guy, bro. I mean, if I was on an island, nothing would be better than KAYTRAMINÉ playing on that bitch! 

D: Oh true, being on an island, I would say Patti Smith. She would sing to me and just talk, so it wouldn’t be as lit as Kaytranada, but we would just hang out and she would tell me stories or something.

E: I’m going to have to say Yves Tumor. That’s a person, besides Dean Blunt, that I can just listen to all the time. They have just so much music out. I’m brining 2010 when they went by Sean Bowie, which is a goated ass name. Like that’s his government name. So I’m going Yves Tumor all the way. I would just be bumping “Heaven to a Tortured Mind,” “Secrecy Is Incredibly Important to the Both of Them,” “Jackie.” *shows their tattoo of the Jackie art*

H: What is the one thing you want to do that you haven’t experienced yet? It absolutely does not have to be music related if there’s something else. 

Q: For me, I’d say either play music that I’ve written or play music that…as much as I love Hollow Earth and the music it’s not what I grew up on. So I want to play something that’s deeply engraved in me, which would just be playing jazz. So I want to get out there and just play jazz. I have before but I really want to make it part of me.

D: *laughs* I want to write a poetry book.

N: That’s valid though.

D: And then, I want to crowdsurf sometime. I want to get to a show that’s that crazy and then just jump around. The two extremes of the human condition.

Q: Write a poetry book and crowdsurf. Both of those can happen at the same time.

N: Yooo, at the poetry book signing! “YO GUYS, OPEN THE FUCKING PIT! TO BE….TO BE...” Okay but on a real note, though…I think I would really want to play a festival. I haven’t done it. I’ve done some larger stuff but I want to do a festival. I want to play my music. I want to be with people that I fuck with and I want to a show that I can actually invite my mom to. Like, she’ll go and post it on FaceBook and my family will actually understand what I do. Instead of this “he does something artsy?”

E: I guess something music and not music related…Spend more time in other places. Going to Philly, I felt so high. Being in New York and spending time out there even for the day. I. now actually want to walk around here in Boston. Here I’ll just be shacked up inside for a couple of days, just going crazy. That’s definitely the big. Music related…dropping an album. I’ve been making music for 10 years now and I still haven’t dropped an album. Or like *laughs* drop music consistently. But that is going to change this fall. Just gotta get things mastered. And going on tour. If that [Philly show] was the micro bit of what tour was like, I really want to do more. I really want to buy a Mazda M5 or a fucked up Chevy for $1500. They [the band]  were saying I don’t know the costs that come with a car, and I don’t *laughs* I’ve never owned a car. If we can get a fund, an artist grant. Throw that shit onto a car. Or rent a car.

D: We went to Philly and New York in my tiny Mazda 3 and that isn’t a big car. We made it work though. 

H: I mean, is anyone here over 25 with a license that can rent a car? You can rent a Uhaul at 21 though if you need.

Dru: I’ll get my license, guys. 

H: If you give me a year, I got you too.

Dru: You should get an Uber.

N: Uhh, can you Uber me down to Florida bro.

E: Yea, but doing an East Coast tour and then going to visiting Rowan on that tour too. Going to LA. Really going to London too. Deniz, I don’t know about you but we should move to New York and start a commune. In Philly we hung out at Viv’s brothers house and in the back…it was like everything I ever dreamed of minus the plants and vines hanging off of everything. It had that really lived in feeling that had one side of the building that was plastered. The other side of the building had a painted wall. 

H: Is there any place we can direct people to listen to your music?

E: Cassettes. Cds. Physics media. We’re going to record it and throw it on Nina Protocol.

D: We’re going to make 8 tracks. You know those fucking phonograph things?

E: We’re going to put it on floppy disks. 

N: Put it on wax.

D: You’re gonna just have to imagine the music.

Q: If you’re walking around just listen and you’ll hear it. 

D: That’s so…cause we’re in the Earth.

Q: That’s what I’m saying! 

N: What if we did a joke one where it’s just text telling you how to feel when listening to our music. Describes it and says “when you listen to this shit it will make sense.” 

D: That cassette we gave the guy in New York has Fidel just talking.

E: He’s saying like brain rot.

D: That’s kind of already there. I’m just waiting for someone to play that shit on the radio and then he gets his joy out of that. Cause that guy is the funniest dude.

E: I think that cassette has three different versions of ‘WHITEYONETHEMOON.’ There’s WHITEYONETHEMOON (song), WHITEYONETHEMOON (punk version), WHITEYONETHEMOON (another version).

D: Then it has 10 minutes of me playing piano and you breaking a drum kit. Then it has y’all playing jazz for 15 minutes.

E: I didn’t realize that cassette was so…knackered. 

Dru: Do you guys want to talk about the actual Hollow Earth Theory? Do you think that there’s a world within the world?

E: I think the world within the world is Viv, Deniz, Quinn, Nathan and Ez. 

D: We actually said this exact thing last night when we were driving. We are the hollowness of the Earth. We’re just in there.

‘Hollow Earth Transmission"‘ zine can be found here.