Half the drums on Holy Pinto‘s new 18-track album “Wedding Season” were recorded inside a huge boat warehouse in Wisconsin. Aymen Saleh could get in with a keypad, set up his gear and use the place by himself. The size of the room did something useful immediately: it gave much of the first half of the record its huge, boomy drum sound.
That became one part of a much longer self-recording job. The record started taking shape in 2021 and eventually passed through Bartees Strange’s basement in Washington, D.C., Saleh’s living room above a Brady Street bar in Milwaukee, an industrial piano repair shop and the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception in Springfield, Illinois. Most of the actual work came down to Aymen sitting with a laptop, reopening songs and trying to solve whatever problem he had created for himself next.
“To me it feels like different spaces carried their spirit into different songs. This album felt like a โself-recordโ endeavour, which for the vast majority, it was. I feel like the isolation / โgroundedโ-ness of the covid-era forced me to lean into self-recording โ finding my own spaces in which to operate and build.”
The boat warehouse came first.
“The boat warehouse was the first one- an isolated building in Wisconsin that I was generously allowed to use. Enter by keypad, set up my musical stuff, and record. Half the record had drums recorded there, for example. The mark it sonically had on the record was that a lot of the songs have very explosive/bombastic/โbigโ sounding drums- purely from the size of the room! That particular element is heard more on the first half of the record.”
Back home in Milwaukee, the setup was much smaller. His living room became the place where ideas could sit around for days and change bit by bit. One microphone would come out for piano, percussion or strings. Aymen would spend hours on the sofa in headphones, clicking through edits and picking up whatever instrument he needed while the bars outside carried on into the evening.
“My living room was such a space to tinker- and my default for putting one microphone out and recording piano, play some percussion, or record strings. I spent hours on that sofa with headphones on, clicking, editing, grabbing instruments- with the nightlife going on outside in the evenings.”
Some sounds took more legwork. When a song needed an acoustic piano, he started calling around and found a repair shop willing to let him bring microphones in for an afternoon. “pharmacy” pushed the idea further. Aymen wanted a real pipe organ, which eventually meant recording at the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception with Brandon Carnes engineering. Church bells made it onto the recording too.
“For some of the songs I needed to source a piano, so I called up a few places- the repair shop was pure pragmatism, and they were kind enough to let me bring in some mics and play. It was a super memorable afternoon. As for the cathedral- I had the same train of thought โI need a real organโโฆ next thing you know thereโs a cathedral who has agreed, and Iโm playing church bells whilst my friend Brandon sets up micsโฆ”
That very practical way of chasing sounds says plenty about how “Wedding Season” ended up taking four years. Aymen had started Holy Pinto in Canterbury, England, before eventually relocating to Milwaukee. The city first made sense as another stop in a period he describes as drifting. Making this record coincided with staying put long enough for the relationships around him to change.
“Absolutely, I think so. Milwaukee was initially a novel extended-stay and just a part of my โdriftingโ journey. This album was the first real bunch of writing/recording I had done in the city, whilst โlivingโ here.”
People from Milwaukee turn up throughout the album, sometimes literally. Short voice recordings are scattered across “us, forever”, “us, in it”, “noly”, “death is in the air”, “she loves you”, “reunited”, “complaint dept.”, “mr. writer” and “monster”. The credited voices include D., J., M., K., Joe Bradley, Steve Kelly, Mike Scollins and Joyanta. Some are friends, some came out of conversations around the city, and together they gave Aymen a way to pull other lives into a record already occupied with relationships and adulthood.
“The album explores a lot of other people – specifically the voice recordings of people out in the city telling their stories – as I became more settled within the local ecosystem and started making more friends/community. Thatโs where the bigger questions come in- of relationships, commitment, closeness and consistency- and could be explored. Rather than just the casual surface-level few hours youโre in a city to play a show, or a frivolous conversation at a random bar with someone you just met.”
By that point Milwaukee had become the place where the record was actually being lived as well as recorded. That put some distance between this album and the old routine of arriving somewhere for a show, talking to people for a few hours and leaving again.
Holy Pinto have always sat around the indie-pop and emo end of things. NPR once called Aymen’s music “Sweetly jangling, good-natured Britpop,” and Death Cab for Cutie and Ben Folds are among the reference points around his songwriting. “Wedding Season” keeps the conversational side of that work close, but the record’s scale comes from how much detail Aymen kept adding around the songs and how often he was willing to reopen them.
Four tracks loosely trace the same area of partnership: “us, forever”, “us, in it”, “us, married” and “us, against the world”. The connection was only partly planned.
“โUs marriedโ and โus foreverโ felt very much of the same lineage- I knew one was a sibling track to the other. They share a lot of the โsoundsโ to my ear- including those live-wire, boomy drums.”
“us, against the world” joined them later through a lyric that was already sitting in the chorus.
“โUs, against the worldโ was more of a happy accident- that lyric was always in the chorus and I was likeโฆ. Ohโฆ here we go. โUs, in itโ acted as a bridge between the first two, based on the recorded conversation I had which segued nicely. Itโs titled with a bit of English cheek, innit.”
The newest of those songs looks back at the early period of a relationship, and Aymen’s version of nostalgia is pretty specific. He misses the period before enough time has passed for compromises, negotiations and setbacks to accumulate.
“The time before the ‘weight‘ accumulated from compromise, negotiations, setbacks. When things felt frivolous and free. It applies to all projects/relationships in life. That beginners mind- unfettered by difficulty and polluted by obstacles/challenges, where you’re instilled with hope and absolute belief. The simple ‘honeymoon’ period of a relationship is where it’s so true and real – you’re just in love and everything is perfect and that’s that!”
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Bartees Strange enters this story back in 2021. He and Aymen worked on three or four songs during a recording session in Washington, D.C. “us, married” kept the clearest trace of those sessions, with Bartees producing the track and playing bass, electronic drums and shaker.
“We did a recording session together in 2021 and worked on 3 or 4 songs. โUs, Marriedโ was the song he put his stamp on the most and that carried through to the final recording.”
The rest became scattered pieces that Aymen kept as the album expanded. Bartees plays electric guitar on “death is in the air” and “us, against the world”, and synthesiser on the outro of “death is in the air”.
“Rather than ending up with a bunch of other finished tracks, the end result was more him having scattered some wonderful playing and ideas across a bunch of songs- contributing some guitar, synth, electronic drums – for example on โdeath is in the airโ and โus against the worldโ – which ended up being released later on as a part of the full-length.”
The guest list keeps widening from there without turning “Wedding Season” into a conventional full-band record. Aymen wrote and performed the music except where credited. Sam Neufeld plays trumpet on “us, forever”, where Michael “cameone” Cerda also supplied the verse bassline. Cray Reickmann of The Oxleys sings harmony on “noly”. Corey Garcia contributes drum programming and percussion to “death is in the air”, and later plays drums on “monster”.
Ben Giddens plays bass on “one tattoo”, arranged the vocals and added backup vocals. “reunited” uses the cameone sample “reunited” from “hijo de ramon vol. 18”, with Cerda also playing piano and synthesiser. Marina Sofia Fernandez sings on “pharmacy”, with violin and cello from Phil Bregant of Wire and Nail. Bregant returns on “special”, “we’re all doomed forever” and both “Dandelion” pieces, including the string arrangement on “dandelion ii”.
Jessica Knight-Carnes of Looming adds vocals to “monster”. “we’re all doomed forever” includes trumpet from Dustin Sendejas, production, backup vocals, guitar and keys from Erik Paulson of Remo Drive, plus bass from Stephen Paulson. Nick Lang plays brushes on “billboard” and Will Hansen of Old Pup adds pedal steel.
Aymen’s problem was eventually knowing when any of it was finished.
A few songs existed in completed versions and still got recorded again years later. “pharmacy” and “us, against the world” both started out higher in pitch, faster and busier on drums, with what Aymen calls a more jaunty, rock-y feel. He eventually slowed both down and opened up the arrangements.
“There were a few songs that I ended up re-recording a couple of years later, despite โfinish versionsโ existing – two examples of that are โpharmacyโ and โus against the world.โ Both the original recordings were higher in pitch, faster, with more drums and had a jaunty/rock-y feeling. I think both retrospectively needed to be slower and have more space for the real feelings in the lyrics to breathe.”
Then came the organ.
“Apparently the former needed a real church organ.. too.. or so I told myself.”
By then the joke and the problem were basically the same thing. Every new solution created another reason the record could stay open.
“After a ton of the โI need a real church organ!โ and โI need to re-record these!โ, you kinda realise youโre up against yourself and your own โperfectionismโ towards the vision and itโs infinite and untenable to have it continue this way forever. So you have to call it!”
The album was eventually mixed by Andy D. Park, Erik Paulson and Oz Craggs across different tracks, with TW Walsh handling the mastering. Bobbie Knopp made the cover. It came out on 14 September 2026, available digitally and on two vinyl variants, including a red-and-white tricolour version and a clear pressing with red and green splatter.
Eighteen tracks was finally enough.
“I felt like I just about covered enough angles of the story I wanted to convey, so was happy to wrap. Towards the end, it had dragged on so long that I genuinely felt I was a becoming a different person, and the story did need to be bookended, for better.”
That is where “dandelion i” and “dandelion ii” come in. They open and close the album, with the first carrying an aborted take that leaves Aymen’s own process unusually exposed.
“โDandelionโ really felt like the cornerstone of the record to me- and it feels the โgrandestโ. I felt it made sense to share โthe hand of the artistโ super plainly at least somewhere on the album and express what I had put myself through – and that comes through on the aborted take of the opener.”
After four years of editing on sofas, finding rooms big enough for drums, calling piano shops, recording a cathedral organ and reopening songs that had already been finished, he needed the second “Dandelion” at the other end.
“I needed that resolve, to have it concluded with that song, and it felt right.”
“us, against the world,” and Wedding Season are out September 14th.
