Sydney’s Sutherland Shire is on the receiving end of a lot of flak from more northerly suburbs. Home to grommets, bogans, other assorted ocker archetypes, and a lifetime supply of Portmans two-tone diamante sunglasses, the Shire isn’t exactly the kind of place you would pick as nurturing local techno talent.

But nurture it is what it has done. HPS? is a self-confessed “raver boy” from way back. I ask him how he found his way to underground dirty doof doof techno in Sydney’s south.

“There was a big crew in [Sutherland suburb] Como,” reveals HPS?. He drops a ton of “old skool” names as he tells of his formative years, culminating in 1995 when he fell in with Vic and what would become the Trip2Space crew, responsible for the Swarm parties.

HPS? comes from a musical background, his parents playing in a band during his youth: “It was mainly rnb and pub rock covers – before you laugh it was the Seventies!” he smiles. “I wasn’t really interested by that but what they listened to at home – like Average White Band, Sly and the Family Stone, and the Meters – I still play now in my room.”

Inevitably the parental interest in playing live rubbed off. “My dad had his own PA so I was always interested in that, then one day he brought home an old Tascam 8 track and a Korg M1 and I was pretty into that then, although I had no idea how to use it. Basically being around a band related environment there was always something to play with.”

He talks animatedly about his passion for music which drove him to computers and then the internet. He’s a regular on the inthemix forum and often seen in the chatroom, where his curious name almost always has people scratching their heads.

So I ask the inevitable question, and HPS? wryly responds, “I was waiting for you to ask that.”

The answer comes with the delivery of a well-rehearsed line. “It’s the product of a misspent youth,” he quips, eyes ever so slightly glazing over as he tells the story of ‘HOPS’, a graffiti tag he enhanced trains with. HOPS evolved into its easier to scrawl offspring ‘HPS’, and then, after so many people asked him what it meant, “HPS? What’s that?” the question mark was added for good measure.

“The question mark is for the people asking, they can take it as whatever they want it to mean.” In response, people have come up with a few creative answers, everything from “High on Powdered Shit” to “Hung Porn Star”.

But HPS?’ name, however strange, is now synonymous with live, driving techno in Sydney. It wasn’t always like that, though. It must’ve been sometime during that “misspent youth” that HPS? fell for his first love; hip-hop and rap.

From late-Eighties dabblings with his parents’ equipment, it wasn’t until 1993 that HPS? caught the production bug. A hip hop producer called
‘Peace Fender’ Kahled introduced him to his Ensoniq EPS 16+ and HPS? was hooked.

The passion for hip-hop saw HPS? gigging around the youth centre circuit with his posse, as an MC of all things! Higher profile appearances included shows at the Metro and Underground Café, before HPS? realised “I hated the sound of my voice so after the support gig for Spearhead and Michael Franti I thought, ‘that was enough of that’, and one of the guys was getting on my nerves, so it all sort of ended.” HPS? laments the “attitude” that is prevalent in hip-hop circles. He sees the Trip2Space techno ethic as far more welcoming, and indeed it was with Vic & Co. he found a new love.

“I used to be the kind of person that says they hate techno but have never really listened to it – then I actually listened to it and found I really liked it.”

HPS?’ love of techno grew, he says, because the T2S crew are all about appreciating and drawing on everyone’s contribution. He found a voice here that he still can’t in other musical circles.

A couple of years into the scene and HPS? put on the production hat. He built on the interest from back in his hip-hop heyday, when he “digged fucking around with loops.” His live show has been a work in progress since then, always keeping HPS? awake well into the mornings after his regular day job.

HPS? dreams, like the rest of us, of being able to pay the bills with his passion, but it’s a long road ahead. Production is something he’d like to do more of, but it’s been hard to find the time since his last EP, ‘Year of the Filter’, 18 months ago.

His love of production shines through when he talks about ‘Filter’ and his live show, the model numbers coming thick and fast:

“An Akai S01 32KHz mono sampler, an MC 303, a Yamaha CS1X, and my pc were used for ‘Year of the Filter’, but only the hardware was taken out live – never trust Windows in a live situation,” he jokes. “It was played in to the PC live one track at a time and sequenced in audio sequencing programs like Protools to get all the crossfades because the hardware wasn’t capable of it,” moans HPS? “Then it was mastered over a few months.”

The equipment was old but HPS? made do, even if it did affect the continuity of his live show at times:

“My sampler was incredibly limiting considering it only had 2 meg of memory, a 32 second sampling time, and was mono. I had to load up samples after every 2 tracks so I had to sort of wait for 30 seconds. I didn’t believe in using HDRs or DATs live because it’s really only pre recorded material – you’re stuck to a certain formula. Like, if the crowd’s really up for it and going off and you’ve got a breakdown coming it’s not real good – I’d rather be DJing. But the sampler made it very annoying.”

While his Swarm gigs betray that long-standing love affair with the undergound techno sound, HPS? is constantly throwing together sounds from a whole cross-section of dance. He hasn’t left behind his childhood sweetheart, hip-hop.

“I dabble in a experimental sort of way in Rhodes and
Hammond driven instrumental hip-hop and electro, and I’d dig to release these tunes, but I think that the time will come for a H.P.S? album, and these tracks will be on that as a showcase, and show that I’m not just a techno producer. I like to freak people out and keep em’ guessing,” HPS? grins cheekily.

But techno is what HPS? is concentrating on at the moment. His sound is changing, and he hopes to soon break away from his ‘exclusive’ gig guide with T2S.

His demo CDs are in high rotation with people like Beyond Base (Crunch), with whom he’s been pushing his developing sound. He cites influences like Adam Beyer and Surgeon, two artists that are fairly removed from the Liberator Acid City sound that Swarm has built its reputation on.

HPS? says his sound is more “minimal”, but in the same breath observes that even the Liberators and the D.A.V.E.s of yesteryear are not the same people now. Their sound is changing, and the flow on, that HPS? sees in Sydney at least, is a diversification of the techno scene.

“I’d like to say Sydney will be a techno mecca but in reality there will allways be a core group of people willing to push the boundaries and keep it interesting and the pokies will take over the mainstream,” he laughs. “I’ll keep producing what I like at the time – there are no hard and fast rules, like every artform – but who knows what will be shaking my ass. I take it as it comes.”

And it’s coming in leaps and bounds at the moment. Further to the sharing ethic of the techno scene, he’s been able to buy and borrow a stack of new toys from Korean ex-pat Frankie Shin, who is himself talking to all the right people in Sydney.

This means that HPS?’ tired old mid-1980s Akai sampler will not be dominating his set for the first time this weekend, with all sorts of letter/number jargon stealing the spotlight:

“I’ve got an Akai S3000XL sampler fully loaded with 32MB SCSI FX – so
no more load time – a Roland JP8080 analog modeling synth and a
Pioneer EFX 500 and an Alesis compressor for added fatness plus a few stomp boxes, guitar pedals, and a Mackie 1642 mixer: this setup is a 2000% improvement on what I had before.”

Add to that his old tools, and live percussion from drummer Matchewee, and HPS? has come a long way, baby.

While he’d like to get some vinyl out on the streets, he feels held back. He jokes about Sydney as a “techno mecca” and, like a lot of people, recognises that Melbourne would be a better place to be to raise his profile.

But Sydney is where HPS? is to stay, and while he can’t focus as much energy into new releases, his live show keeps getting better. The new equipment has given his “driving, minimal techno” a whole new lease of life. And HPS? reports “the wheels are already in motion for another release”, based largely on the new material he’ll be showcasing at Swarm this weekend.

“Hopefully it will be in the shops in a couple of months alongside ‘Year of the Filter’ which is nearly sold out, but I think there’s still some copies at Reachin’, BPM and Moxvox [Vic’s shop] in Sydney.”

It’s a shameless plug, but what the hell. Go check it out. If you like “lots o’ bass, obscenely large 909 kicks, and twisted noises”, then you’ll like HPS?.