Digging Deeper
White Willow might have been on the quiet side recently, but its co-creator Jacob Holm-Lupo has been anything but. Hot on the heels of the latest releases by The Opium Cartel and Telepath, the musician has turned to his collection of vintage synths for current studio project Donner. Prog finds out more about his new album of sound sketches that have been inspired by Tangerine Dream, John Carpenter and Steely Dan.
Words: Martin Kielty
Images: Teresa K Aslanian
“I sit around
and I fiddle
with sounds.
Once I have
a sound that
I like, that
will guide
a progression
or a melody,
and from
there it can go
pretty quick.”
What began as an exercise described as “noodling” by White Willow and The Opium Cartel mastermind Jacob Holm-Lupo is served up as something much more substantial on his mostly instrumental new album, Hesitant Light.
He started using the title Donner – the German word for thunder, although he doesn’t mind if you think of late-night Greek food or the recently-passed American movie director – to release his noodlings as a form of synth sound sketches. Finding that each piece of new old gear brought with it a mercurial level of inspiration, however, the project quickly became something much more ambitious.