Sandhouse on Style, Persona and Constructing Worlds
Blurring the Edges
Could 22, 2025
Images by Jack Dwyer
Rising from the fertile DIY scene of South London, Sandhouse are a duo who deal with style much less as a map to be slavishly adopted and extra as terrain to dip out and in of, one thing to discover, experiment with, and reshape. Caspar Holloway and Anna Sutherland first crossed paths at college in 2018, and it didn’t take lengthy for his or her inventive worlds to collide.
“We each individually needed to begin a band,” Sutherland recollects. “And weirdly, earlier than we have been even launched, Caspar was doing lots of DJing, and I went to one in all his units and liked it. A few months later, a mutual good friend launched them. “We bought a band collectively and did a Battle of the Bands competitors. Very basic college stuff,” she laughs.
At that stage, they have been nonetheless discovering their inventive footing. “Caspar was deep into DJing and producing, whereas I used to be centered on writing,” says Sutherland. “Then finally Caspar despatched me a beat, I wrote over it, we recorded it, and we simply by no means stopped.” Although their first challenge was transient, it made an influence. “We wrote a music, put it out, and it bought like one million streams,” she says. “After that, we thought, okay, we’re positively onto one thing.”
Their contrasting influences have change into the center of Sandhouse’s sound. “I’m into people, guitar-driven stuff, grunge, rock” Sutherland explains. “Caspar grew up on hip-hop and soul, lots of rap. When he performs me a music he likes, I often prefer it too, however I’d by no means have discovered it alone.”
That dynamic interaction has formed their music in sudden methods. Grunge guitars mingle with dream pop textures and sharp digital rhythms. “It’s a humorous combine,” says Sutherland. “After we began writing, neither of us had been listening to a lot guitar music. Particularly not overdriven guitars. Then immediately, we have been making these sorts of tracks. We needed to learn to construct sounds that truly match the temper we have been creating.”
This genre-blurring has change into a defining a part of the Sandhouse identification. ” One we have been initially type of by accident creating,” says Sutherland. “However genres aren’t one thing inflexible lately, persons are doing progressive stuff on a regular basis, and I feel you miss out for those who’re religiously sticking to style. Like, most individuals making various rock lately in all probability aren’t unique rockheads. They’re listening to numerous issues as a result of they’ve Spotify accounts and it’s all there.”
She sees that openness as a part of a wider cultural shift. “Style is type of simply not as necessary anymore. There’s a lot much less snobbiness now. It was fairly suffocating. Individuals are extra ironic, extra relaxed about what they like. I don’t suppose tribes are constructed round one style the way in which they was.”
Their inventive course of displays that very same fluidity. “We spent a few years writing completely different stuff, making an attempt to merge our influences,” says Holloway. ” Fairly a little bit of it wasn’t even near what we’re doing now.”
“Numerous it,” provides Sutherland, “was about determining how we might write collectively in a method that introduced each our tastes in and nonetheless felt like one thing we have been pleased with. ‘Chunk Me Again’ was in all probability the music that type of turned a turning level in our evolution.”
This era of experimentation finally led to The Circus EP, a launch that captures that evolving musical chemistry between the duo. Beneath its shimmering melodies lies a extra unsettling core. Sutherland’s hypnotic vocals are layered over Holloway’s expansive manufacturing, revealing a sound that feels subtly warped, emotionally bruised and at instances even a tad sinister.
Lyrically, the EP explores themes reminiscent of anxiousness, relationships and male aggression. The title observe, “Circus,” examines the unusual, voyeuristic nature of social media. “That one was the toughest to drag off, simply when it comes to getting it proper sonically,” says Sutherland. “I wrote it after I was spending various time snooping on different individuals’s Instagrams. I simply stored considering how unusual it’s, this tradition of continually taking a look at strangers on-line. They do not know you’re watching them, however on the similar time you’re placing your self on the market to be noticed too. It felt actually darkish, in a method we don’t often discuss.”
Sutherland explains that her lyrics usually come from a mix of private expertise and a extra performative persona. “The concepts positively come from my very own life, however there’s a personality I lean into after I’m writing for Sandhouse. That character lets me discover issues I won’t specific as myself. She’s extra assured, extra confrontational. So the songs mirror a mixture of actual experiences and imagined ones, or issues I want I had completed otherwise.”
The shift towards this new sound coincided with a aware determination to depart behind their outdated challenge. “We determined we needed to write down a brand new set of songs and rebrand. We weren’t going to be our outdated challenge anymore. We needed to launch a single each couple of months, and have that outline what the brand new Sandhouse was.”
“I suppose the plan was all the time to work towards an EP,” provides Holloway. “We wrote like 20 songs with the intention of adjusting path a bit. The most effective ones that caught are those that ended up popping out. The sound was growing and we gave ourselves time to discover. It was a gradual strategy of determining what it was.”
“’Circus’, for instance, didn’t even have guitars on it till it was ninety % completed,” he continues. “It was extra like trip-hop, only a bass line. Then we added some shoegaze parts and it actually labored.”
“Actually, we solely determined we have been a guitar band proper on the finish of writing it,” laughs Sutherland. “However we felt it actually added one thing.”
Holloway, who additionally has beforehand dealt with the manufacturing, now works carefully with combine engineer Duncan Mills. “We constructed up a very good working relationship with him, though admittedly I’m a little bit of a management freak, however we’ve fashioned a strong staff, so it’s positively a giant assist.”
Sutherland provides, “Duncan is so accommodating. He desires every part to be completed completely, simply as a lot as we do, so we’re actually on the identical web page. Actually, we’ve additionally written one other EP that we’re simply ending up.”
Their collaborative spirit and hands-on method aren’t restricted to the music itself. Sandhouse’s DIY ethos extends to the visuals. Their music movies have been made with minimal budgets and the assistance of mates. ” We don’t have a ‘staff’ so it’s mainly all us and our mates,” says Sutherland. “For instance, the video for ‘Circus’ was shot beneath a bridge in Millwall with my boyfriend and Casper’s girlfriend. We’re fortunate to have mates who work in movie, so we’ve been calling in lots of favours and as such we’ve been concerned in every part, from planning to execution. With out our mates’ assist, we couldn’t have completed it.”
That very same intuition for world-building extends even to their collective identify, however comes from a way more private place “My grandma is a psychotherapist who specialised in a sort of remedy known as ‘sand play,’” says Sutherland. “It includes drawing or creating scenes in a sand pit, which she would then analyse. Her clinic, which was mainly a shed in her backyard, was known as the Sand Home. In order that’s the place the band identify comes from. Sadly, she has dementia now and needed to promote the Sand Home, however she’s glad the identify resides on indirectly.”
