Devil Speaking

Have you had that little devil on your shoulder telling you to dance lately? If you have, you’ve probably caught the infectious new single, ‘Speak Of The Devil’, off Hermitude’s latest album, ‘HyperParadise’.

Luke Dubs, one-half of the Elefant Traks luminaries, talks about the direction of the new album and his love for the fans. “Well we haven’t actually played much of the album live at all yet, we’re about to hit the road in about six weeks so it’s all going to start kind of happening. We’ve played ‘Speak Of The Devil’ ... and that’s been doing really well obviously, because of all the radio love it’s had.

“It’s been hard to find a song that can follow it and maintain the same level of energy, and ‘The Villain’ luckily has been delivering on that front. So we’ve been playing that for the last couple of shows after ‘Speak Of The Devil’, and keeping people on the same level of intensity. It’s been working really well.”

Hermitude has been a mainstay of the instrumental hip hop scene in Australia for a decade, dropping the now highly sought, limited release vinyl, ‘Imaginary Friends’ EP, in 2002. Widely known for their ridiculous technical abilities, Hermitude consistently push the boundaries of both record production and live skill and ‘HyperParadise’ is no different.

“We’ve been experimenting with different styles of music over the years, like we came into this Hermitude thing with a massive love of hip hop and all the instrumental hip hop beats that were happening in the ‘80s ... with ‘HyperParadise’ we pushed for more of a synthy direction because we’ve been listening to you know, heaps of Hud Mo, Rusty and that type of future beats thing that’s been going on.

“We wanted to go in a bit of a different direction and go a little bit more synthy and samply but also kind of put together everything that we’ve been doing over the years and kind of meld it.”

The new release may side-step slightly out of their typical hip hop territory, but Dubs reveals there was nothing they wanted less than to alienate longtime fans; they just wanted to bring the best out of themselves and a fresh take on their skill set. “Every Hermitude record is like a massive journey for us and we keep a lot of things in mind about where we’ve come from and where we’re going. We also just try and forget a lot of it and basically get in there and just try and kind of push our creative limits.

“You know, it’s probably steered a bit away from hip hop this time … it’s always going to have a hip hop background, the music we write, (but) it’s definitely gone a bit more electronic, maybe a bit more club … it’s different sounds that we like to experiment with and see how we kind of go with it.

“We’ve always been able to write those downtempo, instro hip hop tunes quite easily so we’re always going to have those on the records ‘cause we just love writing that stuff as well. But, yeah, we’re definitely keeping our old fans happy, we think.”

Approaching the complexities of the record with a note of nonchalance, Dubs explains the recording process was a close-knit affair. “Hermitude’s always been an instrumental act primarily, and it was just time to do everything ourselves this time around. We decided to do pretty much everything. We got a guitar player in on one of the tracks and we had a vocalist in for ‘Speak Of The Devil’, (but otherwise) it was all us.”

With a common love for vinyl the duo always wanted to release ‘HyperParadise’ on wax, but the downturn in the industry forced them to rethink the strategy. They opted for a buy-in process where fans could sign up for a pre-release and the faith doesn’t seem to have wavered, the band easily making the numbers required to print.

“We’re both vinyl collectors still to this day so it’s really important for us to do vinyl. Unfortunately with the current climate of the music business, it’s quite hard to front that kind of money when you don’t know if it’s going to sell. You know people say they want vinyl but it’s a different thing to say they want it and actually forking out the money.”

Hermitude play The Brewery, Byron, March 9 and The Zoo March 10. ‘HyperParadise’ is available from February 3.