Hype Williams are up and coming. Ones to watch, perhaps - like a decent player you've seen put in a performance in a reserve match for your local team.
They have shrouded themselves in mystery - so that it's not clear who they are, how long they've been around or what they're all about. Elliptical interviews in the media so far have compounded this impression - as have a series of bizarre lo-fi videos on youtube and a couple of scrappy, tinny but nonetheless interesting albums.
So, given the enigma around them, it is good to see the mystery electronics duo in the Wire this month. They appear in the Invisible Jukebox section - often the best read in the whole magazine. It's still not clear who these people really are. According to the blurb at the start of the interview, "Hype Williams is the performing name of Inga Copeland and the pseudonymous Dean Blunt". The profile tells us the duo met and started working together about two years ago in London, where Blunt was born and raised. Copeland, we learn, is Russian.
Reporter Lisa Blanning then offers some typically Wire-esque thoughts on what we might describe as the meaning of Hype Williams - whose work, we are not surprised to read, "dovetails perfectly with the primarily American phenomenon of Hypnagogic pop." Like most of the stuff they review, you might say.
Hype Williams, we read, specialise in "musical inquisitiveness and tactile evocation". Can work out the first bit, but not sure if the second half of the phrase is supposed to make any sense or not.
I won't say much about the entertaining interview - but it is the most revealing piece on the band I have read so far. There's a funny bit when Blunt pokes fun at the journo's suggestion that they have links to Hypnagogic pop - saying he has only heard one James Ferraro song, and has never even been to LA.
Later in the magazine, their LP, Find Out What Happens When People Stop Being Polite and Start Getting Reel, is reviewed - as is 7" Do Roids and Kill E'rything.
Hype Williams still appear to be in their formative stages, but I sense, somewhere amid all the mystery surrounding them, something very interesting. I'm excited about where they go from here - and will find out a lot more with their third LP, One Nation, which is out in March.
In the meantime, here is the excellent Chatline - which features Copeland washing Blunt's hair in slow motion for about ten minutes.
According to Wire, there are some exclusive tracks from the band on the magazine's website. But when I had a quick look just now, I couldn't see any. Keep an eye out HERE anyway, if you're interested.
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