Her new album, Materia, arrives with the notion that new ideas for songs aren’t necessarily new, but rather extensions of what came before them. The record is a sister album to Holter’s acclaimed 2024 release, Something in the Room She Moves, and in many ways, despite being released in different years, the two were conceived at the same time.

“Sometimes I don’t even build a whole song in one project—I just use the file as a starting point for more improvisation. So I went back into the Something in the Room She Moves project files, not really to reuse material, but to reuse the creative starting points. It wasn’t really about recycling songs—it was more about continuing the creative process.”

There’s a natural continuity present in Materia. Much like everyday life, chaotic and scattered moments are tied together by a more frequent sense of being immersed in something far greater than the chaos itself. For a long time, Holter didn’t have to quantify or elaborate on these qualities. They were simply reflections of the reality she resided in, until she began teaching.

“I sometimes call them ‘wandering songs.’ Since I started teaching, I’ve had to kind of codify the way I think about my process.”

The wandering nature of Holter’s music is derived from improvisation and a deliberate focus on preserving it. The bones of many of the songs on Materia came together in one take, most notably the 10-minute glide that is “My Twin.”

“It’s very much a wandering song because almost the entire form came from one improvisation. I changed one section and developed it a little, but the overall structure is basically a single improvisation that I recorded at one moment in time.”

Like much of Holter’s music, “My Twin” plays with pacing, fluctuating between a slow-motion walk and a well-paced jog. The additions that came after the initial recording, including Holter’s vocals and some playful manipulation of the track, never sacrifice the spontaneity of that original performance. At one point, the song is run through a tape machine to slow it down, briefly bending time to Holter’s will.

“My partner, Tashi, has a reel-to-reel machine, and he helped me do it. I was driving him crazy because it’s so much work getting the slowdown exactly how you want it.”

That tension between letting a moment unfold and trying to hold onto it surfaces again on “Fantasy,” where Holter sings about wanting to “make the sweetness stay.” It’s a lyric that captures the frustration of something pleasurable passing while also revealing Holter’s desire to savour a moment as brief as taste.

“With ‘sweetness,’ I wasn’t trying to define an abstract concept. I was trying to evoke a sensation. I think about sweetness literally—the tip of your tongue, delicious things you enjoy eating, the pleasure of sensory experience. It’s almost like trying to revel in those sensations.”

On “Clepsydra,” named after an ancient device that uses the natural flow of water to measure time, Holter takes that fascination somewhere more literal. It’s the type of device that perfectly colours what her music feels like: measured and calculated, but ultimately guided by a natural order.

“It’s the purest improvisation on the record. I think when I’m improvising—when I’m writing without trying to impose an idea beforehand—I end up returning to this subject over and over again. I’m interested in the paradox that measuring time is both completely necessary and completely futile. It’s funny because I actually explored almost exactly the same idea in a song from 2007 called ‘Measure What Matters.’ It’s really the same subject, although I think this song expresses it much more emotionally. It’s difficult because we have to measure time… but why? That’s the feeling I’m exploring.”

That yearning to preserve fleeting moments also emerges through childhood. Since becoming a mother herself, Holter finds playfulness and childhood memory naturally entering her writing, as on “Laugh is in the Eyes,” where she sings, “I still love that day we chased our tails around.”

“I think that song is really playful. Childlike gestures naturally came through because they helped evoke that feeling. Musically, I was actually very focused on the percussion. The song is basically in five, but then during the chorus it’s somehow in five and four at the same time. I honestly can’t remember exactly how it works anymore, but it makes it surprisingly difficult to play. Between the bass, the drums, and what I’m doing vocally, it’s kind of crazy. I think I’m in four while the rhythm section is in five during the chorus. It creates this rolling feeling that I really like. Those are the words that come to mind: rolling, tumbling, playful.”

In many ways, Holter’s recording process moves similarly. It begins as a tumble and is later played with until it becomes something bigger. Such is the case with the title track.

“I was experimenting with melodies inspired by Hildegard von Bingen. Her melodies leap in these really unusual ways compared to most medieval chant, which tends to move step by step. I wondered what would happen if I took those kinds of melodic leaps and placed them over jazz-influenced harmony. That experiment eventually became the song, and because the melody felt so different from the way I normally write, it seemed like there was a lot more to explore. Later I realized that the word materia also carried all of these associations with matter, material, wood, motherhood, and physicality. That visceral quality ended up carrying over into this record as well.”

Materia ultimately makes improvisation and control feel less like opposing forces than partners in the same process. Time presses forward regardless; Holter’s music finds ways to clutch, cherish and wander through it.