Mathias Anderson, a Wisconsin resident, records under the name Hollydrift. The project surfaced in the electronica underground during 2000, offering dark ambient works assembled from synthesizers and electronics blended with material drawn from shortwave radio and obsolete telecommunication formats. These pieces recall the approaches of Coil, Nurse with Wound, and other sound collagists aligned with Gothic or Industrial traditions.
Anderson’s parents, both arts enthusiasts, urged him to sample numerous creative pursuits. He began with drums yet found the imaginative restrictions of rock ensembles unappealing. Exposure to Gary Numan’s hit single “Cars” on the radio at age sixteen or seventeen prompted him to pawn his drum kit in exchange for a synthesizer and drum machine. He explored new wave through several short-lived groups that rarely advanced past basement rehearsals.
In 1988 Anderson adopted a fresh method, keeping a tape recorder on hand at all times to assemble compositions from field recordings and electronics. During the following five years he issued six cassettes on his own under the name Joy Before the Storm and participated actively in the cassette underground.
He stepped back from music in 1992 to concentrate on photography and installation art while working days as an RF technician servicing transmission systems for police and fire departments. When Anderson returned to music in 2000, he drew on those professional experiences to shape oblique pieces built from ghostly broadcasts and lost messages. By then the underground had shifted considerably; he founded the CD-R label Cuba Club Media and released the EPs Hail the Frozen North in 2000 and Then There Was Nothing in 2001, along with the full-length In These Days of Merriment later that year, before collaborating with the DIY, Omaha-based imprint Public Eyesore on This Way to Escape.
