Empathy Test’s Isaac Howlett sits down to answer questions from Soundsphere about his emotive solo work!
How are you doing, mate?
Not bad! It’s been a tough year in some ways, trying to juggle touring with Empathy Test and launching my solo career as Isaac Howlett. You would think having the benefit of a ready-made platform as the singer /songwriter of a band that’s been building a pretty impressive audience worldwide for the past ten years would make it easy to launch a new project, but it feels a lot harder now to find the kind of free organic growth via social media that Empathy Test benefited from in the early days. Algorithms have been rigged, people are swamped with content, and it’s a real struggle to get people to listen to something new. I’ve struggled a lot mentally, and have felt an intense pressure to live up to expectations built up by my previous success. There’s been a lot of self-doubt and unconscious stalling, which is in part why I’m only just releasing a second solo single now.
How do your inspirations differ when writing something like ‘Endless Night’ to how you would write an Empathy Test track?
There isn’t much difference at all in the way I am approaching and writing the songs for my solo album. In fact, most of the songs were written for Empathy Test. However, my Empathy Test collaborator Adam Relf has struggled to find time to work on anything these last three years and as he wasn’t keen on the idea of allowing me to work with another producer and releasing it as Empathy Test, eventually I made the decision to work on the songs myself and release them as a solo album. The difference now is that I have had a lot more input on how the songs are arranged and instrumented. Instead of them going to the producer (in this case USA producer Walter Kazmier, who offered his services at Dark Force Fest in New Jersey back in 2023) as an acoustic guitar / vocal demo, they’re arriving as mostly fully-fleshed out tracks.
It seems very personal – does writing this stuff give you a different type of catharsis?
A lot of the songs on the album, “A Year Without Light”, were written during or shortly after the pandemic, a time when I felt completely helpless; as if my career had been torpedoed. 2017-2019 were incredible years for Empathy Test, we were on a constant upward trajectory. Then all of sudden, in 2020, just as we were preparing to release our third album, “Monsters”, everything stopped. The whiplash was intense. The longer I sat around doing nothing the worse I felt. “Endless Night” deals with that specifically, as does the album’s title track and other tracks like “Exit Earth” and “Jack in a Box”. Others, like (first single) “House of Cards” and “Something Changed” deal with the disintegration of the band that was also brought about, in part, by the pandemic. “Moths” is me dealing with the weight of fan expectations. Existential crisis is essentially a running theme on the album. It’s all stuff I needed to process, stuff that needed to come out, and apparently, as it turned out, as a solo album.
It’s a very uplifting track, sonically at least – was that the intention?
Indeed. “Endless Night”, although it’s about depression, is also about overcoming it, and finding strength in it. The key lyric is “life laid me low, she dealt me a blow but I know / I’ll feed on these seeds when they grow”. It’s also about the healing power of music, so the music was always meant to wash over you like a warm blanket, or hug. Or like sinking into a warm bath. Walter, the producer, gave it a lot more oomph and bombast than I originally thought it would have. To me, the opening feels like falling snow, then, in the chorus, we’re soaring through the sky. That took me back to the animated Christmas movie,The Snowman, which used to be on every Christmas, which is partly why I decided to release this before Christmas and not in the New year. I think it has a seasonal vibe to it. I also think my move to Austria has seemingly had an impact on my writing, this being one of two waltzes on the album, and also being very orchestral.
This feels like there’s a much more pop-focused lean to this solo work – is that an accurate statement?
I don’t think anyone could say that Empathy Test isn’t/wasn’t pop, but as a producer, Adam brings his underground dance music influences to the table; his love of producers like Burial and Sub Focus, for example. I think that pulls Empathy Test back away from being pure pop. There’s been no concerted effort to make my solo work more pop-focused. However, I write pop songs and Walter is very much a pop producer, so I guess the songs on my solo album are going to naturally feel more pop. Whenever anyone makes that observation, it feels like a criticism, but for me, The Cure’s pop phase was arguably their best phase. Songs like “Just Like Heaven”,”Love Song” and “Love Cats” are unbeatable. I’m taking a leaf out of Robert Smith’s book and just doing what feels right for me at this moment. Speaking of which, the next single, “Dreaming of Trees”, is very much inspired by the unabashed romanticism of that era of The Cure.
How do you feel this work pushes you in new ways as an artist?
Well, as I said, it’s forced me to learn to arrange my own songs, something I regret not having been doing in the background over the last ten years. I did attempt it a few times early on, but Adam was way ahead of me in that respect, and anything that I’d taken beyond just a guitar / vocal demo tended to not get looked at. In the beginning, I’d sit in with Adam and make suggestions or improvise melodies on the guitar or piano while he was working. By the end, he didn’t want me in the studio with him at all, only when we recorded my vocals. It gave him free reign to do what he wanted and only let me hear stuff when he was happy with it, but it left me without any input beyond the initial song writing. The scary part of course, is the feeling of going up, with very little experience against someone with years and years of it. Anything I do is going to be compared to Empathy Test. However, Walter is there to hone what I’ve done and get it sounding as good as can be. Also, “Endless Night” is in 3/4 time, and Empathy Test never strayed out of 4/4.
With Empathy Test’s success, what inspired you to create this solo work?
Frustration, mostly. I know a lot of people are going to be thinking my going solo is just an ego-trip, as if being the frontman of a band wasn’t enough for me and I wanted all the attention for myself, but I had made Empathy Test my life; my only source of income and my only creative outlet. That would have been fine, and I’d have happily continued, had it not been for the other person, who is 50% of the project, suddenly having no time for it anymore, while at the same time refusing to let go of it. Arguably that was for the best, because now Empathy Test can continue to be Empathy Test, if Adam ever finds the time for it, and I can get on with being Isaac Howlett in the meantime. However, I’m certainly not going to take any blame for there being no new Empathy Test music, I tried my hardest! There’s only so much time you can keep touring the same material and I was going to end up having to get a new day job and that really would be depressing.
What are some of your biggest creative, and personal inspirations at the moment?
I’ve already spoken about Robert Smith of The Cure. I was so excited to finally be able to buy a Cure album on vinyl when it was released, this year. In fact, I got two – the limited edition white, and a black one. I think it’s fantastic the way he has always done what he’s wanted to do and persevered with it until he’s now got to the point where he can release a lead single where the vocal doesn’t start for 3 minutes, at a time when we’re all being told every song has to be a in a specific format and if you don’t fit into an easily pigeonholed genre, you struggle to be heard. Everything is starting to sound the same, at least within genres. Social media is just full of bands being like “hey, we’re a Darkwave band”, or “hey, we’re Goth” because that’s what’s going viral right now. I have to remind myself that it’s the music that matters, because that seems to have been forgotten. I guess I’m trying to fill the emptiness I feel in the music industry right now, with my own music.
Is there anything you’d like to plug and promote before we finish up?
Yes – stay tuned for a bunch of remixes of both “House of Cards” and “Endless Night” coming in January, along with a physical release of both tracks on a 7″ picture disc, plus an EP with the remixes on CD. That will be available to preorder on Bandcamp [isaachowlett.bandcamp.com] in January. And there’ll be another new song from me, “Dreaming of Trees”, in February. On 15th February my band, Empathy Test, has a one-day music festival in Leipzig, Germany, where we are performing with a bunch of international artists as guests: The Foreign Resort (Denmark), Emmon (Sweden), DSTR (Germany) and Lucy Dreams (Austria). Tickets are on sale now [https://www.eventim.de/en/event/empathy-test-empathy-fest-der-anker-19305411/].
