 “As soon as you are in the public eye at all, whatever you do, there is always someone there to slag you off. Looking at all the breaks boards and stuff after we did the live shows, the reaction to it overall was outstanding, but there’s always someone on there slagging you off or looking for any little thing to knock you down.”
Chatting down the line from his Oxfordshire country abode, DJ Hyper (aka Guy Hatfield) admits that fronting his new band Hyper involves a lot more exposure than his usual role of DJing, though is philosophical about the odd sniping comment his otherwise acclaimed band has already attracted. “I suppose you’ve got to be the bigger man about it and say ‘I must be doing something right if they are getting that offended by it,” he muses, “It’s not that easy but that‘s what you’ve got to tell yourself.” Comprising Guy, Leeroy Thornhill (ex-Prodigy) on vocals, John Ross (producer) on drums and Jim Davies (ex-Prodigy & Pitchshifter) on guitars, Hyper have already played live to 7,000 ecstatic fans in Taipei on New Years Eve and are set to rock the Glade Festival in the UK this July, showcasing tracks from their debut album ‘We Control’. Though Leeroy Thornhill and Jim Davies’ presence on the record inevitably invoke Prodigy comparisons, Guy’s adamant that Hyper’s vision and musical essence is his- and his alone. “I’m getting this question quite a lot – is the album a Hyper band album or not? Really the answer is no, it isn’t,” he insists. “The album is about me and the direction I want to go in. Obviously there are lots of musicians involved and Leeroy’s done most of the vocals but I do all the keyboards and my production partner Ronnie plays the drums, Jim, who used to do guitars for the Prodigy left the band a week before we went on tour.” He’s also happy to admit the project is a labour of love with money very much secondary to his passion for the band. “The band is something that I want to do that I’m really enjoying and another side of it is that it’s going to open up lots more opportunities. We’ve just done a little mini tour of universities and we lost money on it,” he admits. “If you think that you can do it and tomorrow you’ll be able to retire on all the money you have made from these live shows then you need to maybe rethink why you are doing it.”
Skrufff (Jonty Skrufff): Tell me about the genesis of the album as it a tricky project?
Hyper: “Not really. I’ve done lots of compilations before always as a DJ of course,, I wanted to do an album that people could listen to without having to hear a ninety second drum intro before each track. I’ve experimented more with the actual music in the tracks, rather than just making club music, so it’s almost evolved on it’s own. We’ve always taken the approach of saying ‘OK, let’s start working on an album track or let’s start making a 12 inch, there were always two different directions we could go in. We’d then make a hundred or so tracks, ditching most of them and developing the ones that were working.”
Skrufff: Are you literally talking about making a hundred tracks? Hyper: “You start with loads of ideas whether it’s a hundred or not spending up to a week on some of them and end up realizing fairly quickly which ones you’re going to run with. We had maybe twenty tracks, that we got near enough finished, then ditched them as we saw fit really, which came down to the final cut for the album, really.” Skrufff: On New Year’s Eve you performed at a 7,000 capacity stadium in Tai Pei, South East Asia, how different was that compared to DJing? Hyper: “Very different, because up until then we’d only done seven gigs, including a handful of university dates in Freshers’ week, a tiny industry gig at the Metro in London, Fabric and Cargo so go from that to playing 7,000 people was both strange and great. As a DJ I’m used to traveling on my own to gigs, doing long-haul flights, so it was great fun doing it with a bunch of mates, though
I don’t want to say it’s better than DJing. It was good but because the band is still very new, it was certainly very nerve-wracking.” Skrufff: Were you walking out on stage feeling butterflies? Hyper: “I still get butterflies every time I DJ to be honest. I’m not ashamed to say that. I think to be honest that if you are just turning up every time to DJ or do anything, and you are not nervous then you are probably not giving it your best, so I am quite happy with the nerves, really. If I wasn’t nervous then I’d be a bit worried that maybe I wasn’t still interested in it as much as I should be. No-one likes be too nervous, but a the same time it’s reassuring.”
Skrufff: You’ve called the album We Control and the artwork is a photo of riot police, what’s the logic behind choosing that? Hyper: “There’s not really that much logic, we chose We Control because there’s a track called that and it sounds very lairy and I’m quite in your face. I have my own views on politics but I’m not the sort of person who likes to spend all his time ramming it down other people’s throats using interviews to do so, so it’s quite ironic in a way that we are not trying to make any major political statement with it. IIt just works quite well with the very aggressive lead track of the album and it’s a very strong image. The other side of it is that I’m a massive punk rock fan and I quite like that imagery although it may be a bit of a contradiction, given that I live in a cottage in the middle of Oxfordshire; I’m certainly not rioting on the streets of London. Skrufff: Have you ever been in any riot situations? Hyper: “The nearest I’ve come to an incredibly terrifying situation like that is being down Ladbroke Grove at the Notting Hill Carnival when it’s got really edgy and there’s nowhere to move to. I was also in Zurich a couple of years ago at the time when the G8 summit took place, and just missed a riot then. We literally came up this road ten minutes after they had passed through and found all the cars turned upside down on the streets of Zurich, which was pretty bizarre. But I certainly wasn’t in the middle of that situation, I just saw some of the aftermath of it.” Skrufff: You seem to wear a lot of camouflage clothes for photoshoots? Hyper: “Do I?” Skrufff: I’ve seen you in loads of camouflage jackets…. Hyper: “The only thing ve ever worn that I can remember are some shorts that are cammo, my record bag is cammo and the jacket I borrowed off my manager because I was cold a little while ago for some photos on an escalator.” Skrufff: I found an older biog saying you came up on ‘the deep house free party scene of 1992’ – was that the DIY sound system parties? Hyper: “It was DIY, yes, DIY and Smokescreen. I was brought up near Nottingham and got involved in the free party scene around Nottinghamshire. They used to do a lot of stuff around Newark and Nottinghamshire and also some friends of mine had sound systems at the time as well. We’d be doing all that business of waiting for the answer-machine message with directions to go on at midnight on a Saturday and then off you’d go.” Skrufff: Were you DJing on that scene as well? Hyper: “No, not really no, though I was a bedroom DJ. I actually quit DJing to move to London seven or eight years ago now to do a music management course and I kind of decided I wasn’t going to pursue DJing seriously, I was going to get a sensible job but then when I did the Y2K mix CD for Distinctive which kind of kicked off, it kind of became unavoidable although I still said I’d never quit my job. But then, sure enough, I quit my job.” Skrufff: You worked for Sony didn’t you? Hyper: “Yeah that’s where I went for my work experience and they were very kind to give me an incredibly glowing reference which led me to get future jobs and were very nice people.” Skrufff: How easy was it giving up your day job? Hyper: “When I did it I was earning enough money that I was going to be able to get by, but yeah, it was terrifying in some ways. I’d taken this decision to go and get a proper job in the music industry, which, living up North, is not really the sort of thing you fall in to; you really have to go out of your way to do it, whereas I guess for people from London the music industry is more of an option. There was also the parental factor as well: DJing’s not the most secure jobs, it doesn’t come with a pension plan, so it was a big step to take, but one I’ve never regretted for a second.” Skrufff: Did your parents try to actively talk you of it? Hyper: “No, they didn’t but it took a while to convince them I was doing the right thing. It was quite hard for them to understand what it was I was doing and I think that would be the same for most parents unless they’re very liberal; it took me quite a few years to convince them that what I was doing was actually a serious vocation.” Hyper’s debut album ‘We Control’ is out on May 8 on Kilowatt Recordings. http://www.djhyper.com
Article by Jonty Skrufff (JontySkrufff.com) Subscribe to skrufff musis newsletter at www.skrufff.com |
