INTERVIEW: Occurrence releases new album ‘GEMINI HOLE’

Based in Washington Heights, New York City, Occurrence have spent the last decade building a sonic world in the overlap between electronic experimentation and pop songwriting. The trio of Ken Urban, Cat Hollyer and Johnny Hager have been continually reshaping their sound while maintaining a central focus in curiosity, collaboration and emotional honesty. Having started out back in 2015 with a simple social media message between former college friends Ken and Cat, they’ve since bloomed into one of independent electronic music’s more intriguing ongoing stories.

Their first collaboration, The Past Will Last Forever, landed in 2016 after years apart and immediately revealed the chemistry between Ken’s electronic compositions and Cat’s vocal presence. As the project grew and live performances became part of the picture, Johnny Hager joined as an additional vocalist, completing the line-up that continues to drive Occurrence today. Since then, the group have developed an impressive body of work through releases including Everyone Knows the Disaster Is Coming, If He Were Here, I Have So Much Love to Give, Slow Violence and last year’s paired releases Real Friend and REAL PERSON.

Along the way, their music has found audiences in unexpected places, appearing across podcasts, radio shows and audio dramas while also receiving attention from platforms including the BBC and the Tribeca Festival. Despite their growing profile however, Occurrence continue to operate with the spirit of artists following their own creative compass, resulting in an output that’s unique and always surprising.

That independent mindset now sits at the heart of their latest release, their brand new album titled GEMINI HOLE. Arriving as the follow-up to Real Friend, the record was born from an impulse to venture further into stranger spheres. According to Urban, the initial goal was to create something “art-damaged and weird” and unsurprisingly for a band that constantly moves between experimentation and accessibility, the journey eventually found its way back towards pop.

The album took shape during a creatively energised period following the completion of last year’s records when the band simply began jamming in their New York studio with the intention of quickly assembling a new collection of songs. Those sessions produced material that veered into wonderfully unexpected directions; one late-night writing session saw Ken and Cat composing a song inspired by a scent diffuser sitting in the living room because, in the moment, it resembled a robot smoking a cigarette.

Ken’s lifelong enthusiasm for Doctor Who filtered into the creative process and revisiting classic episodes such as The Happiness Patrol led to the opening track of the same name. The uptempo patter of percussion, jaunty synth lines and piano notes form a bright electronic pop scene capped by bouncy vocal leads to provide an engaging curtain raiser for the album. “Psychic Driver” follows with punchy beats and pulsing synth layers as Cat’s alluring voice glides above to cast a retro-futuristic synth pop outing brimming with memorable melodic writing and energising rhythm.

“Cranky Spanky” leans into the band’s more experimental side with a disorienting blend of woozy synths, zapping textures and marching beats as alternating vocal elements flutter throughout. Title track “Gemini Hole” stitches infectious, R&B-tinged vocal leads into an avant-pop setting that rolls with intense instrumentation and rattling hi hats. Yet for all its eccentric moments, GEMINI HOLE is not simply an exercise in surrealism and as the album plays out, a darker emotional landscape begins to form. The second half shifts towards subjects that carry considerably more emotional impact, revealing another side of Occurrence’s songwriting.

“Hope Fatigue” stems from Cat’s experience trying to support a friend struggling with depression and addiction, when the loss that followed left her wrestling with questions that have no easy answers with the song becoming a reflection of that uncertainty and grief. Emotive vocal leads and a blend of organic piano chords, fuzzy synths and distorted drums combine to deliver a thematically profound and highly affecting moment. The closing track, “World Burning,” was inspired by Ken’s feelings of frustration and helplessness while witnessing a genocide, the song explores the difficulty of processing global tragedy through art, bringing the album to a powerful conclusion via a slick experimental synth pop jam full of rolling percussion, smooth vocal leads and shifting instrumentation.

From start to finish, GEMINI HOLE is equally lighthearted and devastating, absurd and truly human while capturing Occurrence at their most adventurous. In doing so, the trio continue to prove that pop music can still be unpredictable, emotionally complex and wonderfully strange all at once.

We caught up with Occurrence to find out more about their musical journey so far, their new album GEMINI HOLE and what they’ve got lined up for the future. Check out our interview with Occurrence below

What’s your earliest memory of making music?

Ken: I remember making music with my middle school friend David and we called the band Evelyn’s Customers. We made everything on cassettes. The one time we tried to record in a professional studio, the engineer kept asking if Evelyn was a prostitute.

Cat: When I was 10 or so, I wrote a song on piano called “The Spider Song.” My friends at the time went nuts for it.

Johnny: I was obsessed with Lucero and Luis Miguel and I used to perform their songs for my family.

Which artists do you draw most inspiration from?

Ken: We take inspiration from a lot of places, especially literature. Musically, there are definitely touchstones that I always draw from. Board of Canada, GAS, Scritti Politti, Seefeel.

Cat: I always say that Occurrence is my favorite book club. Vocally, I’m inspired by Thom Yorke, Adrienne Lenker, Caroline Polachek, and Victoria Legrand (among others).

Johnny: Like Cat, Thom Yorke is a big touchstone. But with a dash of Barbra Streisand.

How else do you find inspiration for your music?

Cat: I like creating fictional characters and worlds with my lyrics. So fiction plays a huge role in inspiring what I do.

Johnny: I do what Ken tells me to do. Also love.

What do you love about the New York music scene?

Ken: I don’t think we are part of any scene enough to comment.

Cat: Occurrence is its own scene.

What would you say is the perfect setting for listeners to enjoy your sound?

Ken: Sometimes I think you should listen on headphones alone in a crowded room. Other times you should play our stuff really loudly on a pair of good speakers with all your friends and lovers, past and present, by your side.

Johnny: A road trip maybe. Working out. Sex maybe.

How has your own style and sound evolved since you started out?

Ken: Like every band probably, we have gotten better at translating the sound in our heads to what we make.

Cat: We three come from different places artistically and musically, and we keep coming closer together as the years pass. Our sound gets tighter.

Who would be your dream artist to collaborate with?

Ken: The Field. Boards of Canada. Seefeel. Be cool if they did a remix. Though right now, I am finding myself enjoying collaborating exclusively with my bandmates.

Johnny: Rosalía!

How did you find making your new album ‘GEMINI HOLE’?

Ken: Strange because it all came out of nowhere in a way. We had just finished REAL FRIEND and REAL PERSON and we thought we’d take a break. We obviously didn’t.

Cat: For me, it originally felt disjointed as a collection of songs, but once we got the order right, I realized that it’s the perfect album for these absurd times in which we live.

What message did you want to get across with this release?

Ken: As I said elsewhere, we wanted to make something art damaged and ended up veering back to our version of pop. We wanted to capture the intense highs and lows of life right now.

Johnny: Intense but with a melodious approach.

What artist have you been listening to most recently?

Ken: Boards of Canada and Seefeel both put out great records. In terms of newer artists (newer to me) ANSIEDAD1000, Chanel Beads, feeble little horse, ROMANCE, Nothing, those bands’ latest releases are all on heavy rotation lately, and will no doubt inspire some of what we are currently recording.

Cat: I’m really loving the new Death Cab. I’m fully on the Angine de Poitrine bandwagon. I recently saw Joost Klein in concert and he was a ton of fun. Also listening to a lot of SOPHIE.

Johnny: Rosalía!

What’s the main thing you want people to get out of listening to your music?

Ken: I hope some people listen and feel as passionately as we do about what we make.

What’s been your favourite live performance so far?

Johnny: SLOW VIOLENCE show for sure.

Ken: Yeah. No question. Doing the SLOW VIOLENCE performance at MIT with those student dancers and performers. It was so nice to have two weeks to tech and perfect our live sound before performing for an audience. It’s a luxury we might never have again.

Cat: SLOW VIOLENCE was a beautiful experience. I also just loved having so much concentrated time with my bandmates and in collaboration with dancers, which had always been a dream of mine.

Who would be 3 artists to headline your dream festival? And where would it be?

Ken: Definitely The Cure. But we would give them a full day so Robert Smith could play for as long as he wanted to. We would never shut off the power.

Cat: Bjork. She makes everything more magical.

Johnny: Bon Iver would be a great headliner. Let’s do it at St. John the Divine.

Do you have any advice for a new artist wanting to follow your footsteps?

Ken: Don’t obsess over your Spotify For Artists stats. It’s a waste of time.

Cat: Just make things and don’t worry if it’s good while you’re making it. (You can figure that part out later.)

Finally, what do you have lined up next?

Ken: This year, our first album came out ten years ago. We are releasing some special stuff starting in the fall to celebrate all the permutations of the band over its history. I kind of hate looking back so finding a way to do that, but also transforming it into something new has been fun but hard. Yeah, there’s a lot of new old stuff coming out to commemorate the big occasion. Plus we are at work on a new release for next year.

Cat: As often happens with us, we didn’t set out to make an album and now we’re maybe making an album? We have a lot of songs, let’s just say, more than we realized, so we’ll be honing that into some sort of release/releases.

Johnny: Oh please, Ken always acts like he isn’t secretly orchestrating this. He always pretends we aren’t writing a new album while he knows we are.

Listen to GEMINI HOLE below