Mixing breakbeat, trance, stirring strings and soaring vocals, Hybrid have become favourites of discerning clubber and music critic alike. Don’t believe me? British music bible Q says Hybrid’s music is full of ‘soaring, heavenly hooks and thrilling breakbeats’, while DJ Mag believes the group are ‘one of the finest live dance acts’ around. Rowan Blades, ex-Breeder main man, said exclusively to inthemix recently that he respected “what Hybrid are doing right now…they have the potential to be the next big crossover band.”
Upon hearing Blades compliment, Hybrid’s Chris Healings gave a sigh of surprise, before admitting, “Well, that bottle of whiskey I bought him must have worked, huh?” Single malt or not, Hybrid have certainly had a hand in many of the choice tunes kept in record bags the world over since they broke in 1999 with the gorgeous ‘Finished Symphony’. Their debut album, ‘Wide Angle’ followed soon after, with cameos from Julee Cruise, and the entire Russian Federal Orchestra. The group has also proved to be quite handy when it comes to remixes, having reworked the likes of BT, Sasha, Sarah McLachlan, Carl Cox, Energy 52, Freq Nasty, and Radiohead.
Remixes have come thick and fast in the wake of ‘Wide Angle’, with takes on The Crystal Method (‘Name of the Game’), McLachlan (‘Fear’), Future Sound of London (‘Papua New Guinea’) and John Creamer and Stephan K (‘I Love You’) doing the rounds of the vinyl racks at the moment. The last of these four, Healings explains, has a particularly angry beginning. “The day we started working on the mix, the new Mac Cube computer we had got for the studio stopped working, and we were really pissed off. So, we decided to do a horrible, nasty mix of the track to get our anger out, and funnily enough it seemed to work! That was pretty fortuitous because quite a few people are raving about it, which is always nice.”
Following up the success of Wide Angle, which has been spoken in the same circles as club-land classics such as Massive Attack’s ‘Blue Lines’ and Orbital’s ‘Brown Album’, was never going to be easy for the group, especially as the aforementioned artists were inspirations for the Hybrid blueprint. “Blue Lines, the Brown Album, Vangelis’ Blade Runner (score), Quincy Jones…that’s what we like to listen to,’ Healings says. “We’re old ravers who like electronic and classical textures at the same time.”
Another Hybrid influence was Pink Floyd, a group that was instrumental in the birth of the group ten years ago. Healings, Mike Truman, and Lee Mullins were involved in the club scene through DJing, promoting, and production. While at a house night put on by Lee and Chris at a Swansea club, Mike approached the pair with a remix of Floyd’s ‘Another Brick In The Wall’. “I said to Mike that night, ‘you know what I hate? I’ve got all these records I’ve made that just don’t work’. He then said that I should bring them over to his studio, and he’d see what he could do. We worked on a few tracks for a while, and I played one of them the next weekend. The crowd loved it, so I brought my record box up to Mike’s studio, where it’s stayed ever since!”
Since then, the three-piece went about experimenting in the studio, looking for fresh sounds that defied classification or formula. Although the group expressed dismay at the dance music coming out of Britain in the mid 1990s, Healings says the quality of dance music in Britain has never been stronger. “It’s absolutely wicked. I shop at Massive (record store) in Oxford, and probably listen to around 300 records every visit. Of those, I’d buy ten each time, and they’re invariably the ten that have been made by people who have taken risks. They’ve tried to make a record that stands out from the crowd, and we (Hybrid) try to take the same approach when we make music. Back at the time we had spoken out about the state of British (dance) music, we were really frustrated, but today there’s so much quality product out there. My record box is stuffed full with great music made in Britain.”
Due for completion by the middle of 2002, to be followed by a live tour to support it (including performances in Australia), Hybrid’s second LP should maintain those high standards which the group helped to set with their first album. Once again, the sound is rich with strings, and lush vocals, with the addition of choirs and a smattering of guitars. “We’ve just upgraded out studio again, and locked ourselves in a few months ago to start the album, although we do get out on the weekends to DJ. We fell way behind our own schedule, but now we’ve caught up and it’s progressing quite well. There are about five tracks in the bag, and we’re really pleased with them. We’ve also just sent some demo’s away for vocalists to work on, although I can’t tell you who!”
Not to say that Hybrid has had an easy run behind the boards. Healings says that when the group became stuck on a track recently, a relaxed attitude helped sort out the problem. “Just this week we came back from the USA to continue working on a track which was not strictly breakbeat, and not strictly house. For a whole day we tried to do a dirty acid line over the top of it, but it just wasn’t working. Instead of causing ourselves stress worrying about it, we decided we should just dump it and start afresh. At the end of the day we thought it was better to try a different tract. The key is recording is not to get stressed about it if it doesn’t work. We had to say to the record company (Destinct’ive), ‘just chill out! You’ll have the album when we finish it’”
Before then, Hybrid go back on the road with their renowned live show, which heads to Australia in late November for Gatecrasher’s Summer Sound System festival. The ‘live angle’ of Hybrid has taken time to flourish, after John Digweed initially approached them to bring their music to a wider audience. “Digweed asked us to play live one day, and we said to him that we didn’t know how, especially with the tracks featuring the orchestra! For those tracks, the orchestra parts are kept on a hard drive, as well as the drum loops. We have a drummer who plays over the top of the loops, Mike plays the keyboards and I control the analog samples. It took a year to find out how to play our tracks live, and we think we’re almost there now”. Next year, the group plans to expand the live act to a five-piece and use a live vocalist. “Some of the people we’ve worked with a great in a live capacity, so we’d like to work with them outside the studio.”
The Gatecrasher Summer Sound System will be Healings second visit to Australia. After hearing about him talk about Hybrid’s past festival experiences, it’s no wonder he sounds eager to touch down on our shores and soak up the sun. “We’ve probably played at around fourteen or so festivals, and I suppose Glastonbury and V2 were the best of them. However, of those past fourteen, most have been spent in wellingtons and oilskins because of the weather! This time there’ll be no rain so we’re looking forward to it.”
Alongside the group is an impressive line-up that includes Tall Paul, Roni Size and MC Dynamite, Sander Kleinenberg and De La Soul. So who is Healings looking forward to catching at Gatecrasher? “Sander, and De La Soul of course. Oh, and definitely some time in the jungle tent!” Take note: the first orchestral/trance/breaks/jungle album? Just another risk for Hybrid to take.
