Second-year cognitive science major Jimmy Hranowskyj is an up-and-coming musician in the Athens area. He’s a writer and producer for the band Handholder, which got its start last November. Comments trimmed for length and clarity.

 

Q: How did you come up with the band name Handholder?

Handholder is more of an idea. I’ve kind of played off of the surrounding community. Any kind of deistic ideas like God and religion are super interesting to me. Like the way guiding forces work in a person’s life. Even if it’s just your mom or your parents. I feel like a hand holder is present in everyone’s life. And it’s interesting to examine who that could be.

 

Q: How would you describe the music you make?

Folktronica is a really interesting genre to me. Bon Iver and Björk are kind of key figures in that genre. And I really like the blend of acoustic and electronic elements. So I think folktronica is one label we’ve had, ambient folk is another. As well as folk pop or rock.

Q: What has been your favorite event that you’ve played out so far? 

We played a show at Foxglove Plantbar. There’s a greenhouse in there. Nature is really important to me, and for my music. So it was really cool to be surrounded by plants and to play a little show in there.

 

​​Q: What are you hoping to do in the future, either a personal career goal or as a band?

Well, near future, I really want to put out another EP soon, and tour for it. And we’re in the works for that. As for distant future, I’m working to get a master’s in AI at some point, hopefully, because I think AI, for all its shortcomings and scary qualities and abuses, can actually be a really cool music making tool. Just software in general is really, really interesting. So I want to go into, like, software design for electronic music.

 

Q: You mentioned you like getting in touch with nature, is that relevant in any of the songs that you write?

100%. I find myself all the time, kind of writing angry music about the lack of nature that I’ve experienced just in America. A passion of mine is urban design and environmental development. And it’s just like, America gives you so much to be pissed about. So yeah, a lot of my music is influenced by suburban life and my discontentedness with that.

 

Sloane Diamond is a third-year majoring in public relations.