(Central Station/MRA)

Hyper aka Guy Hatfield has finally dropped his debut artist LP, with a little help from his friends. During the evolution of the album, Hatfield has formed his own band with Leeroy Thornhill, Keiron Pepper and Jim Davies [who have all worked with the Prodigy at one time or another] and has decided to call it “Hyper, the band”. This genesis would seem to suggest that the listener would be in for a live sounding CD with real drums, etc, but that is not the case here. Instead, Hyper has sought to blur the lines between breaks and rock, with a definite lean toward the beats side of things more than the rock side. Anyone who has been following his releases of late (the Hives bootleg & AHA bootleg) will have noticed his increasing tendency toward the rockier things in life, and this is a theme which is continued and expanded on the LP.

One thing that can be said for Hyper is that he knows how to open a CD. The slamming guitar and heavy beats of ‘We Control’ make it an instant attention getter. MC Xander helps out on the vocals, on what is essentially a club stormer. The second single is the quality ‘Twisted Emotion’ which works extremely well as both a listening track and 4/4 club bomb. The highlight of the album. The next track is a cover of the ‘Adam and the Ants’ – ‘Ant Music’, and whilst well put together and performed, might leave a few people scratching their heads as to what was going through the group’s collective heads when they cooked this one up. An odd choice, though musically good enough that those with a wide open mind could have something to smile along to.

From here things mix between tempos and vary levels of guitar fuzz and change over vocalists (with some neat production help from Crystal Method on ‘Set Fire to Me’), and all carry along the same theme of breaks, rocks and synth, albeit at varying tempos. Then things get a little clubbier. Trainspotter’s will recognise the drum kit from his Hives bootleg on the track ‘Never Stop’, as well as the beat pattern and kit from the DDB bootleg of Missy Elliot’s ‘Pass That Dutch’ on the track ‘Morning’, adding to the ‘club’ feel. But the benefit here is that the tracks are more fleshed out than your standard club banger, which will leave anyone who likes their breaks in listening as well as grooving heaven. The LP rounds off with the instrumental beats of ‘Cascade’, and finishes off with the neat ‘Electro Lude’, which is a quality slice of softer electro bliss.

As a CD, ‘We Control’ is not a musical “experience” in the sense that there is no attempt to blur the tracks together to create a sound scape. Each track starts and stops within its 3-4 minutes, with a silence between each. This may seem like an inconsequential point to make, but for the fact that the start-stop approach takes away from any real energy the CD might have had, forcing each track to re-grab the listeners attention each time a new track starts, which can easily lead to tracks being skipped if they aren’t instantly likeable. But like I said, Hyper knows how to open a track, so for the most part this isn’t much of drawback, but the lack of any sort of sound scape does unfortunately detract from the overall listening experience here.

All in all this will appeal to breaks heads and those who like their CD’s up front, but anyone looking for a musical experience should go elsewhere.