On The Radar #93 Hypnotized

AHEAD of their first show with live drums on Tuesday night, Robin White from Hypnotized talks about their forthcoming debut album and how cinema is as important as music to their sound.

“We’re all based in Brighton but originally two of us are from a small town called Marlow, one of us is from Bromley and the other is from Hastings. Robbie Wood and I have been making music together since the age of 11, we started to experiment with different styles and sounds quite a bit and around the age of 17 we started to create these droney 30-minute jams which were really the beginnings of what we do now. We called ourselves The Doldrums but then Doldrums came out and we had to think of something else.

“When we moved to Brighton one of the first people we met was Paul Whelan. He seemed to really get where we were coming from and so we asked him if he wanted to get onboard. Earlier this year, we added our friend Pat Tipler from Hastings on drums.

“Mutually we’re all really big on Animal Collective, Yellow Magic Orchestra, Broadcast as well as 1000 other artists. These three in particular though are big on where we want to go next with our sound.

“Films are really important to us too and how films create a certain atmosphere and different environments. We’re really into old sci-fi and horror movies as they seem to create the best surreal worlds and landscapes. Everyday sounds are influential for us too, we record a lot of different field recordings as it’s nice to be able to put sounds from a particular place within the music. Our album has recordings from places we grew up which makes the songs feel more personal to us.

“This year we have supported Micachu and The Shapes, Sun Araw, and we supported Jaki Leibezeit from Can and Hans-Joachim Irmler from Faust. They are all important influences on us so it was a great honour to support them.

“A live experience is really important to us and I think where a lot of electronic music falls down is being exciting live. It’s super difficult when you’re stuck behind a table full of knobs and buttons to create any kind of energy. We used to dress up with masks and face paint but now we use live visuals for most of our shows. We’re hoping the addition of our new drummer will help create a better live energy.

“Last year we released an EP with Brighton label Love Thy Neighbour called Telesto which also came with a bunch of remixes from some of our favourite local artists. We also put out a single called Sunhouse which is on our bandcamp with another release including some of our early jams as The Doldrums. We’ve got a single coming out on Tuesday, November 24 with Verbaasd Records of a Telesto-era song of ours with some more remixes from some incredible electronic artists, including Brighton artists Inwards and Drill Folly.

“We’ve nearly finished recording our debut album, which sounds pretty different to our other releases. We’ve playing it around live a bit now but we’re super excited to get it out.

“This will be our first performance with our drummer. I think live it will add a lot more to our sound. Once we’ve finished our album we’re going to start recording a lot of new material with him, maybe bring the song writing to more of a band approach, have improvised jams and stuff. It should be lots of fun.

“We’re currently looking for a label to release our debut album. Once this is out we can concentrate on re-inventing ourselves, we get bored really easily so we’re constantly writing new stuff and playing around with it, it’s pretty hard to say what angle we might go for next. We’ve got this little EP that we’re nearly finished with too, we want to add some drums to that so it’ll probably end up sounding pretty different to how it does now.

Hypnotized play The Joker, in Preston Circus, Brighton, on Tuesday, November 10, with Kemper Norton and Inwards. Doors 8pm, tickets £5.

Find out more:

www.hypnotized.bandcamp.com

www.facebook.com/hypnotizedband

www.youtube.com/watch?v=-R0FfuedpIA