Interview: Hounds Of Hate
We’ve been covering the goings on of three piece outfit Hounds of Hate for a while now. Their music is of a rare breed, combining live sequences analogue synths and drum machines with influences of hip hop, minimal techno and about three million other styles into their music. They have just released their first 12″ entitled “I Like Triangles” with Back Yard Records and were in the middle of packing for their US tour last Friday when I went to have a chat with them. They stopped packing for a bit so we could talk about the change of Hounds from a one man to a three man outfit, their current US tour and what they consider their perfect record…
So you’re going on your US tour tomorrow, how are you feeling about it?
Simon: We’re Looking forward to it
How did did the tour come about?
Stan: Well there wasn’t really much planning. I guess one day we just decided hey we should go on tour and then within a couple of weeks, Roy from Hype Williams had booked so many dates in two weeks, then all of sudden it’s like “oh this is actually happening.” Unfortunately Hype Williams can’t come any more but we’ve got a plan B: New Yoga… Well it’s plan A now actually.
How do you see the tour going? Do you and New Yoga compliment each other?
Stan: Well I think when we did stuff together in London (New Yoga is based in LA) it kinda gelled so it seems like we wanna play the same kind of places and to the same kind of people. And there’s definitely a relationship in the music.
Which gig are you looking forward to the most?
Simon: Personally looking forward to the off the radar, out of New York ones, the bizarre ones, we’re doing this one in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, where Moby Dick was written. And then also there’s a Baltimore one. You know The Wire… John Waters and eventually Caribou’s gonna let us play in a big sold out show in the Bowery Ballrooms in New York. It’d be a great experience
So Hounds of Hate started off as just you (Stan) doing stuff on your own and then it’s grown into a three man piece. What has the development process from a one man to a tree man band been?
Stan: Yes, it’s been a gradual thing of course. It catalysed from playing me with other people that got me really keen to play live. It wasn’t very much like a pre-meditated thing but all of a sudden we had options to play live and then just I guess we thought why not try and get people to make all these sounds live and with this kinda music I’ve had plenty of people tell me don’t play this live because it’ll never work.
Do you think about how it woks live when you make your music?
Stan: Well yeah it’s a human aspect, I think only recently we’ve been thinking about the live performance when we write songs. Before
it was just layering everything in different possible ways. But I think it makes it a lot more believable when it’s recorded in that way. You’ve got a different palette of sound, when you’ve got different instruments working together.
Do you think your music has changed much since working on live performances and being a three piece band?
Stan: Yes, I think in a good way.
Santi: I think when we first started it was very much Stan’s baby, and it still is… A lot of the music is Stan but when we play and practise, obviously our influences rub off on each other.
How important do you think your individual parts are to Hounds of Hate?
Simon: I think we’re always tempted to throw the good soulful noodly bits courtesy of Santi!
Hounds playing at a recent show
How would you compare your music to other bands/musicians that you would be pigeonholed with?
Santi: I think the aesthetic of our music might be seen as a bit lo-fi in terms of the crunchiness of the analogue equipment but there is quite a high production aesthetic there.
Stan: It’s an aspiration towards high production style! The reality is it’s lo fi, but there’s no hate for hi-fi by any means. You’ve just got to recognise that to make the high-fi records, you’ve got be one of the big people. I mean as much as it’d be nice to have a perfectly produced record, that’s not what makes the song interesting. I think it’s kind of like the human aspect of things, not playing perfectly or sequenced.
What would the perfect record from you would be like?
Stan: We’re making it. Ultimately it’s us who are making it and we’re in control of what happens. We’re very much trying to take our time and it’s the right thing when it’s reached..
You’ve just released your first 12″ on Back Yard Records. Are you happy with the final thing?
Santi: I think it’s nice to have a physical release and something to hold, because records are like, my shit! I think definitely we’ve got a
load of stronger arrangements or songs right now that we aspire to put onto wax aswell.
Simon: I think it is easy to direct someone to your Myspace, give them some burned CDS and you know it does feel like something special and I think it’s paying due to the work that went behind the song and a friend wouldn’t toss it aside as frivolously if you give them a record as opposed to here’s a link to our latest mp3. As much as people have moved away from the record, it’s good to put something
behind it.
Stan: I think for me it’s like the distinction between going to shows for years and being really into music, and I think to have a record with your name on it, you’ve gone across to the other side. You’re now where you contribute to this. I think that’s the defining moment, when you’ve started your initiation into the real world. I mean we haven’t had a long history as a band, so it’s still fresh in our mind setting to be in that role.
Are you getting positive feedback about what you guys are doing?
Santi: All feedback’s good feedback, even if it’s negative but if you thing that drew me to Hounds Of Hate was like, you know the mp3′s everywhere and there definitely was that humanized sound via this analogue equipment that was a little bit different to what I was hearing from everywhere else.
Stan: It’s like a reluctance to take shortcuts really. We don’t make it easy on ourselves and we have all this old equipment not cause it’s really easy to make music with it, but it’s almost like a battle with equipment constantly breaking. I think I probably talk to my synth repair guy more than my mum!
What is the next step music-wise for Hound of Hate?
Stan: The thing is you really you have to listen to your own music a lot and after a while it just means nothing but it’s very difficult to have a critical perspective of your own productions, so this is where we try and get all of our feedback in and all of our input. What I like to do is have more of a concept to each song, to each release… Obviously if you’re attached to something it’s important to be involved from the creation. But I’d really like to work backwards from a title, especially when you don’t have vocals so the whole message can be a lot more difficult to convey
Is working from a concept something you’re working on?
Stan: Fully developing something that you want to hear from something that’s exactly what your idea is. Because as much as there should be room for improvisation and accident, it’d be really incredible to just like record your ideas really quickly and accurately and have your
vision come out as opposed to whatever comes out
Who else is out there doing something similar?
Stan: It’s difficult to know, how do you know what’s improvised and what’s not. People feel very detached from musicians because of the
whole stage separation. The relationship between artist and audience is not really a two way thing so it’s very difficult to get it into the heads of artists.
Which artist’s head would you like to get in to?
Santi: There’s so many different influences on me and on the others as well and hopefully that is conveyed in the Hounds stuff, it doesn’t
want to be pigeonholed as just this genre. I hate people who just ‘genreize’ for no reason.
Simon: It’s pretty obvious in this day and age that everyone can listen to everything but i think it’s actually honestly the truth for us. I think we’ve all listened to a series of completely different types of music throughout our lives and I think it just bleeds out of you whether you like it or not. Whether it’s jazz or psychedelic stuff, or minimal techno or hip hop…
Stan: But there’s a lot of overlaping as well and I think that’s kind of what makes us work as a band, because our whole process comes from having heard many of the same things. You say or this is a little bit like that or if you wanted it to be like that, it’s what it should be like.
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Hounds of Hate Live at Stan’s Place
Where do you see Hounds of Hate in 2 years?
Santi: Hopefully we’ll still be doing stuff, but you never know what the future holds…
Simon: In certain ways we like how it’s going now, because you’ve got the luxury of just taking your time. We have a lot of other stuff going on in our lives and I don’t think any of us are keen to get on that semi-successful band circuit and play the venues that everyone plays in every town. I think we’re kind of happy just being a bit more rag-tag.
Santi: Also when that happens, if you get a lot of fame or hype, or whatever, it can kind of detract from the music. In a way this is just a
part of my life and there’s other parts of my musical life and they all could collide but I want to keep them all going
Stan: I think that’s what’s really important, because really I don’t think we’re doing music to ‘survive’, in the brutal sense of the word
but you just want to leave something good behind and a record’s the best medium for that. the focus is on making good releases, regardless of what happens, hypewise or fame wise.
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Interview and photos by Shane Connolly
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