HOLLY on Staying True to Your Vision and Wrapping Up Minha Vida

HOLLY’s Minha Vida: Hope concludes his ambitious EP trilogy, blending UK garage, classic house, and breakbeat influences into an exploration of optimism and forward movement. Having dropped on December 6th via his label Ilex Records, the seven-track project reflects the producer’s ability to create music that’s as emotional as it is innovative. Each installment in the trilogy, starting with Love and Sadness, has peeled back another layer of HOLLY’s artistic vision, and Hope feels like the perfect resolution.

His career is built on curiosity, perseverance, and a deep understanding of his craft. Whether collaborating with Zeds Dead, REZZ, and 88rising, producing for Baauer’s Grammy-nominated Planet’s Mad, or performing at Coachella and Shambhala, HOLLY has remained focused on creating work that feels true to himself. His production tips reflect this same ethos—trust your instincts, stay curious, and embrace the process as a journey rather than a destination.

HOLLY pairs the release of Minha Vida: Hope with his new “Hot Potato” video series, a producer-focused project featuring guests like Flosstradamus and Gaszia tackling a 10-minute beat-making challenge. It’s another example of how HOLLY continues to innovate while inspiring the next generation of artists to explore their own unique paths in music.

1. Blind Faith

When it was still online, NestHQ was my favourite blog/website. I loved going there and exploring the multiple articles and interviews they had with my favourite musicians and also with a lot of different people in the different worlds of art.

One time I was reading a similar article as this one regarding tips for producers who were starting making music and one of them was about “Blind Faith”. Back then I thought it was an interesting concept but it was hard to grasp what it really meant because my journey in music was still so new and all I wanted was to learn about VSTs and the technical side of music, so it was hard to see past more objective concepts. Nowadays I can totally understand the extreme importance of it.

The whole thing about our music journey is about having faith that what we believe will happen. We are all living in a dark forest where we can’t always see the light, but somehow we trust that the light that exists inside of us will also exist in the outer world, guiding us through all the mist that our path has. All the amazing things I’ve conquered and achieved so far in my life started from me believing and having faith that they could be real.

So whatever your goals are and what you want your journey in music to be, never lose your faith in it even when the people around you can’t see what you see. Practice faith and believe that what you visualize will become true with time.

2. “Tarantino doesn’t change his script”

Another tip I would love to share that is connected with the previous one is to stay true to your vision and to not let other people’s agendas affect your timeline and your pace. I think it’s very easy nowadays to do something and compare with someone else’s success because everything has a number attached to it and sometimes it’s easy to think we should do what someone else is doing because there’s we can see the attention that a certain thing attracts, but we all have different paces, journeys and stories to share, and once you start molding who you are to fit in then the world will miss what is unique about you.

As the title says, even Tarantino keeps the same script when Ridley Scott releases a movie and does well on ticket box numbers. Respect your art and your own time with it. Let your art live connected to the source till it’s completed and don’t let someone else’s journey distract you.

3. Curiosity

I feel like curiosity takes you a long way. And when I say being curious is to be at all levels. Explore different styles, different BPMs, different techniques, different music cultures, different ways to see and approach music. Be curious about evolution. To keep progressing you really gotta be somehow curious.

This lets you discover new parts of yourself and make your art better, and as long as you are curious you won’t get stuck.

4. Stealing vs inspiration

When I started making music I used to look up on YouTube tutorials to remake my favourite songs and replicate my favorite musicians styles in order to learn their process and practice new skills. I actually still do the same thing sometimes in other ways but, back then I would get super paranoid because I would feel like I was stealing someone else’s idea, especially when I started sampling etc.

But soon I understood that everything in music is a conversation with the past, where we use tools that were left in the yesterday and reshape them in new ways to present something new in the present, hoping that they will still be here in the future to inspire the next generation, creating a communication line throughout the galaxy of time.

There’s a thin line between both of these worlds and in my eyes they are both valid if done from a pure place for the sake of a better art, so my tip here is to embrace inspiration from other works at all times even if it means to develop someone else’s idea into your world.

5. Reach out

My last tip here especially if you are starting is to reach out. Not be afraid of communicating your art with other people. To let someone know if you feel like your music can help them. If you have beats that might be dope to have other artists signing on them, send them.

Ask and hustle.

This was alway super important for me since I came into this scene from a small place like Portugal and without any connections. But at the same time don’t let your hunger stop you from seeing other people as the humans that they are. It’s very easy sometimes to forget we are talking to a real human when so much of what we want can be connected to someone else’s persona. Be always kind and go with love.

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