HABITS

Cherished by audiences for their forceful live performances, HABITS are intent on refining their craft. 

Words Triana Hernandez | Photos Elliot Lauren | April 2017

HABITS: Connelly and Hillyer, for Swampland 02. Photo: Elliot Lauren. Styling: Stuart Walford | All clothing by Rose Chong.

Whether consciously or inadvertently, Melbourne-based HABITS represent an important glimpse into the future of Australia’s music industry. For over four years, the duo has been experimenting with the amount of emotional depth and darkness you can attach to the structure of a club track. Their widely acclaimed debut EP Ugly Cry—released last year—is a rich production that combines darkwave, club soundscapes, uncanny vocal effects and emotionally tense lyrics that traverse themes of anxiety and vulnerability.

Maia Connolly and Mohini Hillyer met in Year 12 art class. From the start of their friendship they were attending live shows together or hanging out and jamming—first with keyboards, drums and vocal loops, before picking up guitars and trying a more traditional band set-up. Eventually, after borrowing a friend’s drum pad, they began making beats and manipulating their voices to craft a distinctive sound that reflects their identities and politics.

The duo is renowned for the raw, almost ecclesiastical energy of their performances, which has taken them from playing at small bars to a handful of friends a few years ago to playing in front of 10,000 people at the Golden Plains music festival earlier this year. As HABITS become more successful, they continue to assert a desire to remain honest to themselves—even if that means subverting the mainstream path to success.

On a sunny afternoon in March, I am welcomed by the band into Hillyer’s studio. We sit on the floor, smoke ciggies and drink beers and champagne. We chat idly about the recent Golden Plains set and their tour last year supporting veteran electronic artist Peaches. Hillyer says none of these things have really hit them yet—they are still in disbelief that they got to play those shows. The wind picks up and filters through the window; drawings flap on the walls. We close the window and enjoy the calmness for a second, and then we begin.

What made you decide to move away from garage into more of a purely electronic field?

Maia Connolly: I think it was because we wanted to make the music that we liked listening to, so we got a drum pad and software. We were listening to a lot of synth-heavy bands that were coming out of Nihilistic Orbs [Melbourne record label 2009-2013] at the time, like Nun, Forces, Chrome Dome.

Mohini Hillyer: I just remember having the thought—because I was already in a garage band [Wet Lips]—of how annoying it was lugging a fucking kit around everywhere, so I didn’t want to do that.

A point of difference in the way you approach electronic music is the vocal effects you use. Do vocal effects allow you to break down narratives of gender roles and the expectations attached to male vs. feminine singing styles?

Hillyer: Maia was already an amazing singer when we started. [My voice] had the power but I didn’t know how to sing so I kind of hid behind the effects… I still do. I still get like really “earrgh” singing, so that’s why I started using effects. But it was also a dysphoric thing.

Connolly: I actually don’t get dysphoria over my singing voice because for me I really enjoy the rich, deep tones in my singing voice. I definitely get dysphoria over my speaking voice, which is a really weird conflict because there’s nothing I can do about that as vocal feminisation would ruin my singing voice. So for me the gender aspect never played into it. I always felt like my singing voice was genderless even if it didn’t come off like that to an audience. Even though it’s a deep voice I never felt like it was gendered in a male way. My soft, rich, deep tones are feminine.

Your live performances are full of confidence and there’s so much energy coming from you two, which is a beautiful juxtaposition with your lyrics being very emotional and about vulnerability.

Connolly: Absolutely. My favourite music is club music and it’s what I want to make. I love the energy when you get a room dancing, like they’re giving you energy and you’re giving them energy back. I think the goal of the club aspect is to make it banger-y and to make it danceable, but the goal of the songwriting is to be vulnerable and to be honest and to make an emotional connection.

Hillyer: I really like aggressive, pounding music anyway, because it charges you up, but I still get stage fright. I can hide my vulnerability behind that pounding beat and level it out between vulnerable personal shit I’m dealing with and a pounding beat. It’s like two different halves of my personality come together.

People who see you live and don’t know you at all would probably think you are the most confident, extroverted, spotlight-chasing musicians out there.

Hillyer: I can’t go to social events without freaking out and I’ll probably have a panic attack at least once a week and I’m a big hermit. It’s weird because then when I have gigs it’s all eyes on you and you’re just like, “Well here’s my pain.” Performing HABITS is very cathartic and you feel powerful.

Connolly: That kind of on-stage confidence doesn’t just happen—I’m performing it. I might not always be feeling that confident, but I’m giving a performance and there’s a threshold I have to force myself to cross, because I don’t wanna put on a show where I’m nervously looking at the ground. So I force myself to crouch down and look into someone’s eyes and sing something. I have to force myself into the zone.

Photo: Elliot Lauren. Styling: Stuart Walford | All clothing by BRUCE.

The style of music that you’re making is still very unheard of within the Australian context, but there is obviously a global movement of future R&B, modern ballroom and club deconstruction that’s happening worldwide. Do you see HABITS belonging to that global movement?

Hillyer: I’d like to think so. But we’re stuck in Australia so no one has heard of us.

Connolly: If I’m to flatter myself I’d say yes. I mean, our current stuff only really exists in a live context because we haven’t really released our new music. But I would really like for us to be peers with the Tri Angle or Her Records folks. That’s what we listen to mostly. I think in some ways I do feel a little out of context [in Australia] and it’s totally fine. I don’t know how to say this without coming off as patronising to audiences, but there is a bit confusion around us. People are like, “Oh that was fun, but that was weird.” There are so many musicians in the world doing what we’re doing, but people just don’t know.

So is HABITS a bit of a lone wolf within the Australian music community?

Hillyer: There’s other artists here like BV or Kandere that are sick. I mean, I definitely see that we’ve got peers. It’s not our egos saying Aussies are not “up to date” with the rest of the world, it’s not that it’s just… we do feel out of place, we feel like not everyone’s caught up. Also, we don’t have the population to have an interest in it, so it’s harder to get acknowledged here.

Connolly: Geryon is another example of an artist who’s doing something really interesting here but mainstream audiences don’t really know what to make of it. The scene is so condensed here—there isn’t as much opportunity as there is overseas.

Is it perhaps liberating that you can’t be pigeonholed into one scene?

Hillyer: It’s a blessing and a curse. The blessing is having the opportunity to support a diverse range of cool artists that come to Australia. We are invited to support hip-hop, electronic, noise or even garage bands. But the curse is that no one knows how to explain us.

For years now you’ve self-described as “sad goth party jams”, a tagline that a friend of yours created. Goth is a term that has so many connotations though; in which ways do you think that HABITS is goth?

Hillyer: Well, I’ve always been a goth and it was just a funny way of explaining it. When our friend came up with it we thought, “Oh, that’s funny and it fits.” I guess I think we are goth in the way that the Cure are goth—they do happy songs but Robert Smith’s lyrics are so fucking devastating. For me, it’s the dark themes, like sadness and vulnerability—that’s how it fits with me and our music.

Connolly: Goth is such a broad term and to a lot of people it means nothing, but I feel like it sets the tone for what people can expect. It’s dance-y music, but it is also industrial and dark and there are those influences from the Nihilistic Orbs folks. Even if we are not making “sad goth party jams”, the description prepares people in some way.

You’ve mentioned how your music has progressed as your musical influences have changed. Who are some of the most current influences for HABITS?

Connolly: I don’t know about genre names but that sort of deconstructed club music, the kind of stuff that’s on Tri Angle Records and Her Records. Artists like Rabit, Sudanim, CYPHR, MM. Also artists like ABRA and Princess Nokia, who are a lot more lo-fi and just a reminder that the scale of raw to well-produced isn’t the same scale as good to bad.

Hillyer: Arca has been releasing all these singles from the upcoming self-titled album. I’ve been loving it in terms of influences for soundscapes. I also love Placebo; I’ve noticed they’ve crept into my style of singing. I love my ’90s alt-rock, before emo.

Connolly: Pre-emo emo.

How about your lyrical content; what are some influences for each of you?

Connolly: serpentwithfeet has really incredible, very emotional and straightforward lyrics but they’re very visceral and poetic. A bit further back I would say that HTMLflowers was actually a really big influence for me because that was the most forthright and honest songwriting I’d heard. Also, I don’t know if this is too embarrassing, but CocoRosie because their lyrics are so figurative and visual but still communicate a lot and I think I learnt a lot from that. And then before that, I think the first person who made me want to write songs was Nina Simone and I don’t have an explanation for that; it was the first music I heard that [made me think], “I need to create my own music.”

Hillyer: CocoRosie is a probbo fave from our teenage years.

How about you, Mohini?

Hillyer: I hate songwriting.

Do you listen to anyone for inspiration to guide you through?

Hillyer: I guess all my influences are quite direct like serpentwithfeet, Brian Molko from Placebo… even Bjork who is kind of abstract but still quite direct emotionally. I’m still super shy and I can’t write my emotions down. I’ve never had a diary, so writing honest thoughts is fucking terrifying for me. I can’t be honest with myself so I go about it by writing abstract lyrics. The meaning’s always there but it all makes sense to me after a few goes singing the song.

What are your main inspirations outside of music?

Connolly: Mortal Kombat! We’re really obsessed with it. It’s come full circle, back in the zeitgeist. That whole soundtrack and those outfits really fit in with what we’re doing. I keep finding little phrases—little synths, little melodic bits—in our songs and I’m like, “That’s totally from Mortal Kombat.”

Hillyer: Kinda got a cyber goth vibe, you know? The imagery. I’ve always been a goth, whatever that means. I’ve always loved dark stuff. I had a coffin in my room when I was a teenager, lots of emo shit… knives and stuff.

Connolly: We love cheesy horror movies.

Do you think you have a desire to be scary with your image?

Hillyer: Not scary; I love being harsh. I love being spooky. I’m always the villain of the thing.

Connolly: I feel like with our image we do—well, I do. I feel like our image is spooky and goth but it’s primarily glamorous. I feel glamorous in this project and I don’t care if our version of glam doesn’t fit with other people’s expectations.

Hillyer: Definitely! I feel like we’re really glam, even if I look like a mess with lipstick smeared all over my face, I think I look hot.

What inspired that goth/glam element in the band?

Hillyer: I grew up with imagery of new wave and early punk. They covered their face with eyeliner and shaped it differently, they played with colour and it wasn’t traditional lipstick application—it was lux and theatrical. I think it’s the fun of getting ready, it always psyches me up for a performance.

When you say theatrical, do you think when you perform you are being someone who you wish you could be outside the stage, or are you amplifying who you already are?

Connolly: It’s absolutely the latter. When you’re a trans person your options for showing yourself authentically are really limited and one of the spaces that you can own your most genuine self is in a performance context, which is unfortunate in a broader sense, but very fortunate for us. I feel like our stage presence and our presentation is our most genuine expression of who we are—even if it comes off as performative and over the top, it’s all honest.

Hillyer: Like me in third-form Pokémon.

Connolly: We started the band as Charmanders and now we’re Charizards.

Let’s talk about your gear, past and present.

Connolly: Well, we started with whatever keyboards we had at the time and BOSS vocal pedals, which we still use. I feel like most of the time friends have had gear and we practiced on it and learnt to use it. It’s really been whatever’s been a safe jump. Our friend Luis [Egypt Lies] had a Maschine drum pad and we had a couple of jams with him using it and it was super user-friendly and very effective and that was our first software and beat-oriented hardware/gear. We just stuck with that, it’s all just depended on what friends have had.

Hillyer: Whatever’s cheap and accessible.

And what about now?

Connolly: We still have the vocal processors, we still have Maschine and we have a Novation MiniNova synth.

Hillyer: Yeah, we scrapped the keyboards because it was getting a bit hectic bringing around two massive keyboards.

Connolly: It was really cumbersome. The synth we use is another example of a friend just lending us his gear and us being like, “Yep, we know how to use that—easy.” So we’ve essentially been using the same gear that we learnt to make electronic music on just because there’s endless possibilities when making electronic music, but we feel more inclined to hone in on gear that we know how to control and we can curate sounds a lot more carefully.

Hillyer: We don’t need a million toys.

I like what you say about the “endless possibilities” of electronic music. Electronic software is like a portal into infinite sonic worlds—how does having electronic software affect the band’s sound?

Connolly: When you get into the realm of software, your options for gathering sounds are only limited by the internet, [so] not limited at all; your possibilities for manipulating those sounds are so vast that there’s essentially no limit on what kind of sounds you can produce. Before we jumped into the world of software we were using a lot of our voice, which was great. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with limitations in electronic. Your limitations also are your skills and your awareness of sound, but before that I guess we were just limited by what we could achieve through our voices and our little keyboards.

Hillyer: We were also just still learning. We started with Maschine 1.8 where you could only put certain effects on a certain sound, but we’re in the process of moving to the 2.0 model where you have many more options. We can do much more stuff we’ve learnt over time. More panning, manipulation of the sounds, stuff like that. I like limitations because if I had all the possibilities in the world, all the gear, all the access, everything, I would be so lost.

You’ve talked previously about how you’ve found a specific HABITS sound palette. How exactly would you describe this?

Hillyer: Grating. Industrial. Evil. MC: Metallic. Cold. The Nickelodeon show Are you Afraid of the Dark?

Are these words you actually use when you’re making your music?
Connolly: Sometimes we’ll be working on a beat and the rhythm is there but some of the sounds are wrong and we’ll say things like “it needs to be more metallic”, “it needs to be more whippin’”. Not by any process or checklist, but sometimes it’ll call for it. Sometimes it needs to be more spacious, sometimes it needs to be more suffocating, sometimes it needs to be more sinister, sometimes it needs to be brighter.

Photo: Elliot Lauren. Styling: Stuart Walford | All clothing: Rose Chong; leather harness: COMME des GARÇONS.

It’s noticeable that a band of your size and with your pull remains unsigned. Why is that? What are your thoughts on labels?

Connolly: We’re dubious because we’re really controlling. We really care about this project and it’s our baby and for me it’s all I have, so the idea of potentially handing that over to someone is a really scary thought. Also, we have a lot of friends who have record deals and never in my life have I heard someone say, “I love my label, they do so much great stuff for me and I’m never disappointed and do not feel exploited.” That’s just something you never hear. I think if the right deal came along we would go for it but it just hasn’t happened yet. In saying that, the music industry has changed so much and recorded music doesn’t have the significance it used to in terms of making a career in music. All the money we make comes from live shows so from that perspective we have a booking agent and that’s really valuable, but the idea of someone putting in money into a recording that might not even come back just seems really pointless.

Hillyer: There’s people who love us and really want to help us out, which is so amazing, but I just don’t think it’s time yet. And we’ve been doing so well without representation. The only downfall is that we have to do a lot of admin as well as the creative side, but we’re doing fine and we can get advice from other people when it comes to things like how much money we can charge for a show. I also have this big fear of a moderately-sized label that would keep misgendering us and not really take it seriously or stick up for us with people who will come into contact with us.

Do you think that a reason that HABITS hasn’t fully blown up in popularity is because the band doesn’t fit into Australia’s predominantly cis-white-male narratives?

Connolly: Yes. I mean, honestly, one factor is that we don’t have that much recorded output and we’re not playing the typical music industry game. It’s been a very genuine endeavour in that we’ve mostly stayed with our community and we’ve stayed with our friends, but I think it would be really naive of me to think that HABITS being visibly non-binary hasn’t hindered us in some way. We represent an image that a lot of people would find confronting; it would be foolish of me to think that that hasn’t played a factor in it. I guess in some ways it’s held us back but in other ways I think that our unique experiences are what makes the music and what makes our project so interesting. It’d be boring if we weren’t the people that we are and if we weren’t facing the challenges that we are, so in a lot of ways I think that’s propelled us forwards.

Hillyer: We’ve missed out on a lot of big gigs and festivals. We’ve been offered them initially and then got an email like, “Oh actually, maybe not,” because of our music and our image. I think their reasoning is, “Oh, I think you’re a bit too confronting for our audience.” I wouldn’t call it holding us back, though—it’s more like they are not ready for it. But I don’t care. I’m not here to educate the mainstream.

In what ways do you think HABITS is misunderstood by mainstream crowds?

Connolly: The way that our high-octane music and performance is, people sometimes think it’s a joke band—they don’t understand. They think it’s a joke band because we or the performance is so confronting or whatever. I think people are used to seeing people like us represented as punchlines and when they see it in performance—they see us going so 100 per cent, people going so hard—they think it’s a joke. I think people who are cis and people who are white who do stuff in the same vein are not viewed with that kind of scrutiny. I think that’s something that really affects me. People sometimes come up after a show and think our show was funny or frivolous but it’s not frivolous at all. For me it’s comes from a really emotional place. So that’s one massive privilege that we don’t have in the music industry, people will not assume that this is serious and won’t assume that it’s genuine.

HABITS seems to consistently put together line-ups that give priority to new queer/PoC/femme artists over the type of line up that tries to book “big” artists to draw a larger crowd.

Connolly: It’s actually never been a conscious decision. We’ve only ever booked acts that we love and that we’re obsessed with. For me it’s as simple as, “We choose them because they are the best.”

Hillyer: I didn’t even think of it as giving a priority to queer and people of colour as supports, I just really like those bands. We like supporting bands people have never heard of before or just starting and we book them because we like them. That’s super important to me because we had that opportunity given to us at the start, where bigger artists would ask us, “Hey, do you wanna support me?” and we were stoked. Now we can give that opportunity to others. But yes, it’s also important for queers and people of colour to have as much visibility as possible.

Photo: Elliot Lauren. Styling: Stuart Walford | All clothing by Rose Chong.

What has been the proudest moment for you as a band?

Connolly: That’s hard. There have been so many moments that have made me feel really proud and validated. There was recently someone who came up to us after a show and said that we’d inspired them to come out to their family, which was amazing. Even though we’re not here to be trans activists, we’re just here to make music, knowing that our visibility affected someone in that way is very powerful.

Hillyer: I don’t have anything as heartwarming as that [laughs] but because of my anxiety there’s always such a negative spin to things in my mind, all of our achievements. If I was fifteen and knew that I would be touring with Peaches… I mean, that’s fucking huge. She’s a fucking icon and to do an east coast tour with her was massive. I recognise that it was huge, but it still hasn’t hit me. Or even playing Golden Plains—that’s every live band’s goal and we’ve achieved it. Big moments like that, but also little moments where you touch strangers’ hearts in the crowd.

Connolly: Also at Golden Plains, that moment when the sound cut out but the audience kept chanting our lyrics, that was unbelievable. I’ve dreamed of a moment when people would chant our lyrics and I was very proud and it was heartwarming.

What are your goals for the coming years?

Hillyer: I want to tour overseas and because we’re not represented we’re going to try go for grants to afford that because [in] Australia, even though the underground is so progressive, the mainstream is fucking fifteen years behind. It feels like Australia’s clouded in marijuana smoke and when you go out there’s a little bit more understanding. I really want to check it out and hopefully we get signed to one of our favourite labels, maybe, in a perfect world.

Connolly: This year I want to put out a record. I’m happy with how we’re doing and we’re going to keep pushing this as hard as we can.

This piece first appeared in Swampland issue two.