Victoria and Vancouver Island have a lot of musical talent, and Victoria Buzz wants to highlight some of the best and brightest local artists and bands.
Every Monday, there will be a fresh ‘New Music Monday’ article to help people find and support local artists and bands that are up-and-coming, well established or hidden gems!
For this endeavour, Victoria Buzz has partnered with our good friends at CFUV 101.9 FM, UVic’s campus radio station, to find and select the musicians and bands for this regular column.
To date, there have been 82 New Music Monday features published through this collaboration.
This week, Hillsboro is the New Music Monday highlight!
The five-piece alternative-rock/emo/shoegaze band from Victoria has been making waves in the scene since they formed in 2019, and have just released their sophomore album, A Party in Your Name.
Though the band has had some members come and go through the years, the current lineup consists of Sam Wells on lead guitar, Nima Walker on vocals and guitar, Dexter Hodgins on violin, Oliver Hollingshead on drums and Layten Kramer on bass.
“It started as just kind of a project to play some basement shows and evolved after that,” Wells told Victoria Buzz. “As soon as COVID hit, it became more of a dedicated recording project.”
“I’d say the current incarnation of the band kind of started around 2022, we came out of COVID zone, the band started playing shows a lot more and we have a record that had been worked on for a couple years that we put out in 2023.”
She says that after their debut self-titled record was released, Hillsboro started touring more frequently.
Since Hillsboro first started playing, their sound has evolved as the band grew tighter and Walker was able to refine his process for songwriting.
“When working on the first record, a lot of that stuff was Nima’s first attempt at writing songs,” Wells explained.
“He was working on the early EPs that came out and were mostly home recorded at the same time as he was writing a lot of the material for the first record.”
She noted that the approach for their self-titled album was to make a “sleazy alternative rock” record, which all members had a soft spot for.
“I was kind of floored when I first connected with Nima and he showed me the stuff he’d been working on,” Wells continued.
“I was pretty blown away that it was some of the first material he’d been writing, and he was like 21 at the time.”
For the new record, A Party in Your Name, Wells said that having the core of the band established with less movement of members, the band was able to have a bit more stability in their approach to writing.
She explained that they all come from different backgrounds and have played in projects that span many genres which became a strength when Hillsboro was recording the new album.
“We all came together under this more 90s, 2000s rock thing, bringing all those influences together.”
Highlight Track – “woah”
According to Wells, A Party in Your Name has a bit of an overarching theme which covers struggling with and overcoming addiction, as well as confronting the harsh realities of life.
This theme is perhaps best illustrated on the track “woah,” the lead single of the record.
“In my early twenties, addiction shaped the landscape of my life, distorting my sense of self and stability,” Walker explained.
“When I finally reached a turning point, I found myself unprepared for what came next: facing reality without the numbing presence of substances.”
The band’s singer added that the music of this album chronicles that reckoning—an unfiltered confrontation with his past, regrets and hope for something better ahead.
As for how the song came together, Wells said that this track allowed the group to really dial in how the record was written.
“I think it was a real turning point for how we all wrote together,” Wells added.
“A lot of this album started as FL Studio loop demos that Nima would create—little instrumental palettes—and ‘woah’ in particular was mostly that big screeching opening guitar riff and the electronic drum loop underneath.”
When they went into the studio with Colin Stewart at The Hive, the band opted to keep a lot of that demo DNA.
“I think it was kind of a new step for us,” she continued.
“Nima will put in these electronic drums because he’s a great electronic producer, but it’s just a reference for what we can do, but in this particular case we thought this whole track kind of hinges on this weird 90s acidhouse thing.”
Hillsboro used those drum beats as a foundation for each track and built around them throughout the record, giving its sound a distinct identity that stems from the demos.
Check out “woah” by Hillsboro below:
Listen to “woah,” A Party in Your Name and the rest of Hillsboro’s catalogue on Bandcamp, Tidal, Spotify and Apple Music.
Though Hillsboro has several shows coming up, they don’t have anything lined up in Victoria that can be announced.
Over the rest of the year, they are embarking on a tour across Canada, touring in Europe after being invited to play the Left of the Dial festival in the Netherlands and looking to record some more material.
That said, Wells said that she expects they will try to play at least one more show in Victoria before they head out on tour.
Keep an eye on Hillsboro’s Instagram to stay up-to-date on future shows and releases.
Related:
- New Music Monday: Northcote embraces heartbreak on new album ‘To Cherish’
- New Music Monday: Sail Cassady blend soul and goth influences on new single
- New Music Monday: Treewell rally Victoria’s screamo scene and release debut EP
CFUV is a non-profit campus and community radio station that plays a ton of local music of all kinds across Vancouver Island. If you like to support local music they are an amazing resource with a plethora of new local tunes in their arsenal.
“They mean everything to this community,” said Wells.
“CFUV is the foundation of so many young bands getting a chance to try things out.”
Tune into CFUV 101.9 FM on air or online!
Let us know what you think of Hillsboro in the comments below!
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