Lush layers of orchestral strings and waves of electronic harmonic bliss accompanying deep driving break beats only begins to describe the sound. Mention the name Hybrid to anyone who’s listened to their ground breaking dance music soundscape album of 1999, Wide Angle, and more often then not you’ll get dreamy accounts of an album that can only be matched by the groups reported blistering live performances.
After keeping fans waiting more than long enough the group finally got around to releasing the “difficult second album” in late 2003, Morning Sci Fi, and in doing so polarising their fans. It still had the trademark Hybrid touch of incorporating orchestral recordings into their music. But this time around another influence had also left it’s mark, namely rock and roll. In comparing the two albums Chris Healings, one half of the group, explains the difference between the two albums from his home in Swansea in Wales. “The first album was very much all guns blazing the “rave” hybrid. The second album was weird because we scared a few people away. However I think it’s better to scare a few people away and evolve into something new than stay where you are.”
And changing they have been. It seems like a natural progression for Hybrid’s music to feature in films as it’s often described as having sound scape qualities and the lads themselves have been quoted many times as saying classical music and movie scores have had a huge influence on their music. As an example Chris explains where the idea for their classic tunes Finished Symphony came from. “I’ll tell you what it was. Basically me and Mike (Truman) had gone to a rave and got back (home) and his mum was playing this classical piece. We were still going from the rave and we were like “you know what, that’d make a cracking track”. Then it just turned out, it was just that moment between rave and listening to something coming down in the morning.”
It thus comes as little surprise when asking what he’s been up to of late that in addition to touring (more of that later) they’ve been helping out on the score for the new Denzel Washington flick Man on Fire with Hollywood veteran composer Harry Gregson-Williams. In addition to this there’s upcoming work on a new King Arthur epic. “The film stuff we are suited for it, I mean we listen to so much of it. I love films as much as music, especially the film scores. We’ve taken a nod to film scores all the way through Hybrid, it’s one of our little tricks.”
With an album that’s barely six months old it’s no surprise to hear that the last few months have involved periods of intensive touring in support of this and the subsequent singles. It’s with bitter sweet curiosity that the conversation turns to New Order bass player Peter Hook (who plays on Morning Sci Fi) who has been accompanying the band for some of their more prominent gigs of late in both the US and UK and it seems, leading the Hybrid boys astray. “He’s hilarious. The last gig we did at Fabric I arrived at the club and he was sweating in the dressing room. I asked him what he’d been doing and he was like “I’ve been in that bloody jungle room, it’s fucking great, it’s like Hacienda.” This is before the gig and he’s dragging us all into the jungle room going off his nut. New Order are doing a new album and Bernard’s a really slow writer. I think Peter gets a bit bored and he loves to play live and to travel and meet new people. So he’s played with us at Glastonbury, Fabric, New York, LA, he’s like our little celebrity bass guitarist.”
Sweet because, well, how much do you now want to see them live? Bitter because it was admittedly with a sense of disappointment that I first read the announcement of the Two Tribes line up and noticed the words Hybrid (DJ Set) instead of Hybrid (live). Of course the cost of touring what has expanded from a three piece to a five piece band (touring party of eight – plus the wads of gear) is “an absolute fortune” but there is a sign of hope. “I think the plan was to come and do the DJ sets, do some press, build a name for ourselves and then hopefully come and do the live show later. That’s the only territory we want to do. We don’t really want to do Europe, well we do, but we want to do Asia and Australia and we won’t rest until we do. We will be there at some point (live).”
So what exactly do Hybrid get up to behind the decks? Carefully crafted layers of aural bliss? WRONG!! These guys have just one thing in mind and that’s having a party. “We still bang out breaks and house. We were in Romania last week banging out at the after-party for Steve Lawler and it was five hours of the dirtiest underground uber-clubbing that you can get. It was proper, a big black room with a huge sound system, full of people going nuts for five hours. We play a lot of our own mixes in our DJ sets. We’ve just done a mix for UNKLE which is vocal with lots of guitars but is still very much house. There’s a new mix of REM, which is breakbeat and very much the typical Hybrid sound.”
With a more and more artists getting the Hybrid touch the acts that have or are soon to be receiving “hybridisation” include Radiohead, Placebo, Jane’s Addiction and (cue for all Joy Division/New Order fans to start wetting themselves), if Peter Hook gets around to digging up the original DAT’s, Joy Division’s Love Will Tear Us Apart. “We like to do this stuff cause it makes for a more interesting mix. It’s not that we’re majorly influenced by all these bands, many of which we are, don’t get me wrong. We still love dance music, breakbeat and dirty underground clubbing, but it just makes for a better mix.”
So even when spinning records the Hybrid boys will be inflicting upon their audiences a sound which is very much their own. However instead of exploring the cinematic sound scapes of their recorded music they will be instead drawing on their number one primal urge – TO PARTY. “Dance music is just so ingrained into us now. I’ve been DJing for sixteen years now and spent most of that raving with white gloves on, I loved it all. It’s fucking great.”
So what are these two Welsh boys looking forward to most for their tour de Oz? “I’m just looking forward to getting there and playing to good crowds. The Gate Crasher tour we did last time with James Lavelle and Meat Katie was one of the best tours we’d done, especially Perth, that was an excellent night out. We had some great, legendary, after parties. And we’re just looking forward to pretty much the same thing. We’re going to come armed to party.”
With plans for a three disc mix album, a double live/remix album and their third artist album all to be released by the years end, 2004 and looks certain to be a busy one. Make sure you catch Hybrid as they tour as part of the Two Tribes festival around Australia over the coming weeks. They’re up for a good time and if we show ‘em a good time they might just bring that live show our way.
Hybrid will be touring Australia for Two Tribes in February and March:
Sat Feb 28, Two Tribes Adelaide
Sun Feb 29, Two Tribes Perth
Fri Mar 5, Friction Canberra
Sat Mar 6, Two Tribes Sydney (BUY TICKETS)
Sun Mar 7, Two Tribes Melbourne (BUY TICKETS)
