Windhand share thoughts on recording Eternal Return and working with Jack Endino

Transmission 188: Interview with Windhand

Windhand formed in Richmond, Virginia in the late 2000s, shaped by upbringing in less densely populated areas and a shared interest in heavy music.

Their most recent album, Eternal Return, released in 2018 by Relapse Records, marked a shift in tone and structure. Produced by Jack Endino, the record came together after a period of personal and creative upheaval. The sessions focused heavily on texture—multiple amp setups, ambient mic techniques, and detailed vocal layering—resulting in a record that moves between force and drift. In 2023, Relapse reissued their self-titled debut as a deluxe edition, including unreleased demos and alternate mixes, again remastered by Endino. Windhand have announced a short run of European dates for 2025.

What first drew you toward creating heavy, atmospheric music, and how did those early ideas evolve into Windhand?

Garrett: We all grew up listening to heavy music and psychedelia, or rock bands that had atmospheric records, so really it was just came out naturally. There was never a conscious decision to create something specific, it was really just a natural evolution, and honestly a lot of happy accidents along the way.

Were there particular albums or artists that influenced your approach to heavy music in the beginning?

Garrett: For me, as far as heavy music it was KISS, Black Sabbath, and Metallica. But I also grew up listening to a lot of the Jackson’s, The Beatles, and even Duran Duran. Later on punk rock was an influence and then bands like The Melvins and Soundgarden.

Were there any sonic experiments or techniques you tried on Eternal Return that pushed your sound in a new direction?

Garrett: Yes definitely. Jack used a lot of microphones on the drums, and did some ambient micing as well, the drum sound he came up with was huge. I really love the way they sound. He spent a lot of time with Dorthia doing vocals, making sure everything was pitch perfect. And as far as guitars he had several amps that we’d experiment with, he’d suggest different effects pedals, and even an EBow just to add different textures on a couple songs.

How did working with Jack Endino for Eternal Return challenge or shift your creative process?

Garrett: We had worked with him before on the previous record and had a great time. He’s really easy going and fun to work with, but he’s also not afraid to tell you when something you’re playing isn’t great or just not working. We recorded all the early records ourselves, so we were really left up to our own devices, which can be good and bad, so getting the opportunity to work with someone so great and talented as Jack was a fantastic experience for all of us. It made everyone want to work harder to make a good record.

Have you started thinking about what comes next after Eternal Return? If so, what direction are you considering? Are there themes or sounds you’re interested in exploring further in your next work?

Garrett: Usually themes don’t really present themselves until the songs start to take shape. But we’ve got more than 8 years worth of ideas to work on, and there’s a couple completed songs we need to revisit. We lost a couple years to the pandemic and over the last couple years everyone’s been busy with their personal lives, but once this string of shows is done we’ll start the process of plowing through almost a decade’s worth of ideas and just see what comes out of it.

How did growing up in Richmond, Virginia, impact your connection to music and the local scene? What were the biggest challenges when forming Windhand and establishing your sound?

Dorthia: Well, none of us actually grew up in Richmond, we are from North Carolina, Virginia and New York, but we did all meet and form the band here in Richmond. One thing we do have in common though, as far as where most of us are actually from, is that we grew up in pretty rural areas, with the exception of Parker (who is no longer playing with us) who grew up in the suburban sprawl outside of D.C. 

I think for the three of us, growing up in less populated areas definitely influenced us. We all spent our teen years obsessed with and consumed by listening to music and learning how to play it– which is probably easier to do when you are many miles away from anything a normal teenager would consider “fun”. There is also less outside influence I think, when you grow up far away from other people and especially when the town is so small that there might be only one or two people who you can even manage to relate to, if any at all. It’s hard to be 16 no matter where you’re from, and no one really knows who they are yet or even how to figure out what they like, or love, or are against. You are just absorbing the world and other people and being influenced and stimulated by all these new sensations and emotions and it’s just so much noise.  In that way, I think it was easier to grow up in the middle of nowhere.

There is a lot less noise and your emotions and desires aren’t constantly brushing up against a bunch of other people’s emotions and desires. It’s easier to know what you like and to not question it–to understand that it doesn’t need to be questioned. That has intrinsic value. When you like a band, the reason is as simple as –“I just do.” You just like it. Not because your friends like it or because you know it’s cool in whatever scene. You write songs you want to hear without ever considering an audience outside of yourself. But even though I’m glad we fell in love with music in this way, I guess it did present its own challenges as well. Adjusting to writing songs with the awareness that they would be perceived by people outside of ourselves felt, and still sometimes feels like, a kind of radio static or highway congestion in the background of your brain. It feels invasive and it can scramble your natural instincts and sometimes make you question yourself and what you actually like, and whether or not  you actually like it. Wondering what perceptions and experiences of some random critic or stranger who happen upon it will be superimposed onto it in a public way–when in your mind you were just experiencing what amounted to a pure and uncomplicated, unanalyzed expression of love.

But I am very grateful that our first experiences with music were not that way, and I think the former mindset is what we always aim to keep ourselves in when we are writing.
I’ve always thought there was a certain sound, or maybe frequency is the better word, that is unmistakably present in the quiet isolation of farms and fields and forests and mountains and cow pastures, that I can appreciate much more now in hindsight. 

How did the early Richmond scene respond to your music, and what was the atmosphere like at those first shows? Did you feel connected to a specific movement in the local scene, or were you forging your own business direction from the beginning?

Dorthia: When I was deciding what college to go to after highschool, I based it pretty much completely on where I thought I’d be able to play music and find other like minded people to play music with–and that’s why I chose Richmond. I think at first I felt like going to college was just something I had to check off my list, but I always knew what I really intended to do was play music. So naturally, when I moved here, the college thing quickly took a backseat to writing and playing and going to shows and meeting other people who liked and/or played the kind of music I was into. In my early 20’s I probably went to a show at least 6 days out of the week, and played and wrote when I wasn’t there. So by the time I joined Windhand in 2008/2009, pretty much all of my friends were involved with the music scene here already, and were really supportive of this new thing. When Garrett told me where they were practicing, I realized it was a warehouse I had been to a thousand times to watch many of my friends’ bands practice. 

A friend of mine booked us a show almost right away, I think we had been playing together as a group for only a few months haha. So we had a very supportive reaction in Richmond, and it was a special time because everyone that played heavy music there were also good friends, and we would play with each other all the time too just for fun, in living rooms, basements, on porches, by the river, wherever and whenever, all the time. I think it made us all better.

The period between Grief’s Infernal Flower and Eternal Return brought major personal and artistic changes. How did those experiences affect your music?

Dorthia: Well, life is always changing, for all of us, and if you are someone that makes art or music, that’s always going to have an influence on what you create. During the time between those two albums we all experienced a lot of endings and beginnings. When you’re going through a time like that in your life, there is a sense that you are sitting in the “in-between”, kind of like a train station, or an airport or the hospital. It forces you to consider what you believe about the place before and the place after, and I think you can definitely hear a lot of that in the lyrics and music of eternal return. After all is said and done, do you believe there is something else or do you believe there is nothing else?

Photos courtesy of Windhand

Matteo Damiani

Matteo Damiani is an Italian photographer and author. Curator of the sites Retrofuturista.com; weirditaly.com; china-underground.com and others