orchid mantis

The Arc of orchid mantis

The pivots — what forced orchid mantis to reinvent.

1. 01

   The Rapid-Fire Tape Dumps

   From 2014 to 2016, Howard was operating at a breakneck pace, treating his Bandcamp page like a public hard drive for every sketch and ambient loop he finished. Releases like 'Hessdalen Light' and 'Grave Spells' were defined by heavy tape saturation and a refusal to edit down the sprawl, capturing a very specific moment in the mid-2010s lo-fi scene. You can hear the hardware struggle in these tracks, where the hiss often fights the melody for dominance in the mix.

2. 02

   The Structural Shift

   Around the release of 'Kulla Sunset' and 'Yellow House' in 2018, the project shifted from formless ambient textures toward more concrete indie-pop songwriting. This move was signaled by a cleaner separation between the vocal tracks and the instrumental backdrops, moving the project into the same headspace as the 'dream-slacker' movement. The influence of more traditional song structures replaced the drift of the early tapes, though he kept the warped, pitch-shifted aesthetic as a signature.

3. 03

   The Collaborative Refinement

   Collaborations with Matt Messore of Cathedral Bells pushed the orchid mantis sound toward a more polished, shoegaze-adjacent territory seen on 'How Long Will It Take.' The addition of more driving percussion and crystalline guitar leads stripped away the basement-dweller vibe in favor of something that could actually fill a room. It turned the bedroom project into a professional outfit, trading the mystery of the 'Holograph Tapes' for the clarity of a songwriter who finally found his voice.

Influences

• The Microphones — Howard has explicitly cited Phil Elverum’s 'The Glow Pt. 2' as a fundamental text for his approach to recording. You hear it in the way acoustic elements are suddenly swallowed by analog distortion and the intentional use of 'bad' fidelity to convey intimacy. It’s that same philosophy of making the recording process itself a character in the song.
• Boards of Canada — The heavy use of warbling synth pads and the obsession with childhood nostalgia mirrors the textures found on 'Music Has the Right to Children.' Howard uses those same pitch-unstable melodies to create a sense of unease within his pop songs. It is the blueprint for how he handles the 'memory' aspect of his aesthetic.
• Deerhunter — Coming out of the Atlanta scene, the influence of Bradford Cox’s ambient-punk experiments is baked into the orchid mantis DNA. The way Howard layers delay-heavy guitars over simple, repetitive rhythms pulls directly from the 'Microcastle' era of Deerhunter. It’s a local lineage of using noise to create space.
• Duster — The slow-core pacing and deadpan vocal delivery on tracks like 'Flashbulb Memory' are a direct nod to the blueprint laid down by 'Stratosphere.' He captures that same feeling of being stuck in a cold room with a 4-track recorder. The emphasis on the 'space' between notes is a hallmark of this influence.
• Ricky Eat Acid — Sam Ray’s blend of ambient textures, found sound, and Casio-keyboard pop was a clear precursor to Howard’s 2015 output. The fragmented nature of the early orchid mantis tapes reflects Ray’s collage-style production on 'Three Love Songs.' It’s the sound of the internet-age bedroom producer figuring it out in real time.