The product of a fated Craigslist posting, The Hausplants blends the intense with the ethereal. The trio’s newest EP, Into Equilibrium, is a testament to both their far-reaching influences and shared musical language, expressing simultaneous rage and joy. In this conversation, Zel (vocals, bass), Amir (guitar), and Sondor (drums) discuss gleaning inspiration from the natural world, their experimental ventures on the new EP, and the ways music offers understanding where words fail.

Where does the phrase Into Equilibrium come from?

Zel: Well, it’s part of the lyric in that song, and we were considering what we wanted to name the EP, and I have done a bit of writing around the word “equilibrium” because I like both what it represents and how it sounds. It’s a nice word. And the concept from a purely chemical sense is that a reaction is happening both forwards and reverse at the same time, and I think when you look at the absolute chaos and bullshit that’s happening in the world right now it does feel like, Where is it going? We had this super chaotic album cover where it’s like, “Is it going to resolve? Is it positive or negative?” It’s kind of balanced in the same way.

Who/what are some of your biggest creative influences? Where do you find inspiration?

Zel: I feel like my contribution is more lyrically, like I—it doesn’t always happen, but I try to write poems every night, and 90% of it’s not any good and will never see the light of day, but I think it translates to my lyrics because it’s typically whatever I’m processing. And I guess in terms of inspiration from that, I’ve been realizing that I fill my days with a lot of sound. And it’s the moments that everything’s quiet that I’m like, oh, that’s a line.

Amir: Since we have different backgrounds, we have different influences. And the instruments, too—we’re on the same page, but have different appreciations for music. That’s a good thing about Hausplants, we don’t feel like we’re very Western—we don’t want to be any [one] part of the world. Anything comes, this way. I listen to everything, honestly.

My dream is playing Glastonbury, all my life. I [spent] lots of time in front of the TV watching it. That stage inspired me.

What do you find inspiring about that festival specifically?

Amir: I listen more to British and UK music. Most of my taste goes to that side, and one of my goals was to go to Glastonbury—I’ve never been there.

Do you think because you’ve never been there…?

Amir: Yeah, it’s a fantasy, you know? You live in it.

Sondor: I feel like when I play music, especially as a band, I try to convey my emotions as much as possible. I never wrote lyrics in my life before, but if I were to write, I feel like it would be about love or spirituality and the relationship between people and the universe. I like to listen to podcasts and read books about it, so maybe the emotions I’m trying to convey are related to that. I don’t know if I could say, “this is it”.

A lot of your lyric influence seems to come from nature, and as you said, to the universe and the world around you, and I’m curious why you think that is.

 Zel: I think [Sondor] actually put it really beautifully, where it’s just about how you capture an emotion. Do I write about nature a lot? Probably. I think about it a lot, especially climate change is always on my brain. And I’m trained as a scientist, so that background definitely shapes where I come at it.

Sondor: It might sound a little crazy, but I feel like the human emotions that we experience are essentially connected to Earth. So, whatever you’re seeing—for example, if you see a beautiful mountain, people will be moved, right? Like, oh, that’s beautiful. And I think that emotion essentially belongs to Earth. So, whatever we’re trying to capture in our music is part of the Earth. They’re just expressed through people, so that they can be perceived. Because without humans, it cannot. I don’t know.

How have The Hausplants developed since your first EP? Are there any new musical/lyrical elements you’re exploring now?

Amir: The second album especially, Into Equilibrium, most of the recording happened at my place, and we had a lot of time for exploring with sound design. We started the album with some train station sounds, but it’s muffled. So, imagine you have earbuds in, and you pause a song, and you hear a train passing—it’s muffled. That’s why we have it [that way] on our record, in our first song, we feel like it’s just people walking, talking, chatting, and we have some synths there, and to me it feels very ‘60’s-or-70’s-movie. That’s my perspective when we do sound designs; I make some visuals for myself, just underneath sound. Most often sounds come from the visuals; I have some translations in my brain that turn into the sound. Like, this thing happened for the “October” synths—one note goes down, the vocal goes down, it’s like a wave.

Zel: I think we’ve been more experimental with this [EP].

Amir: We added the brass, we added orchestra. We wanted to have more organic than sampling or digital. We made the album more emotional. It’s different, we tried to explore, like, “Why don’t we have real trumpet? Why don’t we have real cello?” And so, we used that for Into Equilibrium, and honestly, we didn’t have any fancy studio, we just recorded at my place, just with a microphone. The trumpet was recorded in Iran by one of my friends. Into Equilibrium is more of a nostalgic Middle Eastern sound for me, especially for the rhythm parts. Sometimes you don’t need to have melody—rhythm can make you emotional, too. That’s the beauty of [it]—rhythm can make you dance. The other songs, too, “Too Close to the Sun” is more 2008 for me, it’s very dancey. But each song has its own character.

How do you want your music to make people feel?

Zel: I feel like in general, doing lyrics and singing, it’s such a deeply personal and human thing, and I love just feeling things, so honestly, I think just feeling absolutely anything. Any sort of sense of belonging is such an amazing thing that music can do and hold space for. I love a song that is joyful but also one that is rageful.

Sondor: My favorite music is like—I listen to a fair bit of punk music because it makes me feel intense. And sometimes anger and sometimes just intense sadness. I guess I would love it if people feel similar.

Amir: I listen to sad songs because it makes me emotional and [it’s] satisfying for me. Happy songs are great but I can dance all the time, so I listen to a lot of ‘90s or 2000s sad songs, especially shoegaze and post-punk. The nature of post-punk is sad, depressed, very personal; it makes me more emotional. It’s a hole, right? You go through it. That’s why I like sad songs.

How do you want your music to make you feel?

Zel: I love playing music, especially with these two. Genuinely, being on stage, I’m like, “Oh my God, I’m so happy.” I think also, I do a lot of processing and sometimes being super pissed about something and ripping yourself open like that in front of people is really cathartic.

Amir: You know, three years, we play a lot, we jam a lot together. When you play with people, there is some bonding—you don’t say anything, it just happens. It’s the nature of music, you get the energy. We never talk about this, but when the energy is right, everyone enjoys. Music language is [when] you don’t have to talk, you just listen, improvise, anything comes, and you feel [it].

Sondor: One of my favorite things is playing on a stage. It’s just so awesome. I feel this intense, being-in-the-zone feeling. I think I feel alive the most. One time, we were having so much fun on the stage, I thought to myself, I could just die right now. It’s just essentially that.