DARKPSY EXCLUSIVE
THE DARKPSYDE INTERVIEW
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WHICKED HAYO
For the last 5 years, Belgium based act Whicked Hayo have been honing their skills and attracting a lot of attention with their explosive live shows and unique style. Their popularity received another boost when they were featured on the Full Moon Festival 2006 DVD and now, with their debut album Soundbreakers (finally!) released, it seems that 2009 may well be the year of Whicked Hayo.
It is therefore with great pleasure that we welcome Dan and Morad to The Darkpsyde. Welcome guys and thanks so much for joining us.
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Q 1 – The Whicked Hayo sound is a real breath of fresh air to the scene. Energetic, innovative and filled with some of the biggest and most twisted breakdowns darkpsy has heard. Which artists and genres would you cite as your main influences?
A – Whicked Hayo is a long story involving many artists from all around the world. As the promoters of events in Belgium like Femina Mandragora, Rhakti Dei, Tribal Gathering and CCCP, we have the chance to meet great producers and artists from all around the world. They brought their experience and knowledge to our studio and we shared our experience and knowledge with them too. We try to mix every production style that we love, like psytrance, tribal, break beat, trip hop, hardcore and hip-hop into a nice energetic result which is our personal sound.
Our heroes are Aphex Twin, Juno Reactor, Psykovsky, Azax Syndrom, Squarepusher, Amon Tobin, Kindzadza, Neofight, Azura, Ultimate Records Family, Hilight Tribe, Cosmo, Jahbo, Gow, Droidsect....
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Q 2 – Even before your debut album was released, Considering you had only had 2 tracks officially released, (‘Hayo’ on Psychic Imprint and ‘Deadly Cargo’ on The First Oracle), there was an enormous buzz surrounding you guys, largely due to your live performances on the festival circuit over the last year or so. How long have you actually been playing live for?
A – We’ve been playing live acts in Belgium for five years now. During this period we have had the chance to see people’s reactions on the dancefloor, therefore learning how we can make the crowd go crazy and how much we can bring them to the top of the trip. It was a cool experience and we had, and still have, a lot of fun with experimenting on the people with our mathematical formulas.
When we are on a stage, we want to let the party explode and bring the people to a next level of energy with our mad blood. We are not scared to make a show of it by taking the mic, playing crazy sounds, jumping and doing crazy movements, because we are also human and we like to have fun on the stage like two children.
We think this energy we have on stage is a way to communicate with people who “work” with us to make the atmosphere explode.
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Q 3 – You were featured on the Full Moon Festival 2006 dvd, which for ‘newcomers’ must have been a real honour. Do you consider that your peak moment so far?
A – We arrived at Full Moon Festival like underdogs. The only people who had heard about us were the ones who had received our promo pack or had seen our live act from all over Europe. However, DJ Chris, FMF organiser was sure that we would create something wicked out of it and we really want to thank him with all our heart for his trust in our project.
When we started to make the live act for FMF, our scope was to bring something high quality but also something original so we started to create sounds like maniacs, with breakdowns that were more energetic and more powerful; that brings you into a new story which takes you from the low frequency to the high frequency.
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Q 4 – Your debut album, Soundbreakers, was released very recently. Can you tell us a little about the writing process for it and what you aimed for musically?
A – The writing process has taken 5 years. Many of the tracks were created years ago, but we worked on them over and over to get the best production for the dancefloor. It took a long time to create this album but we wanted to give the best of ourselves and optimize the quality more and more. Now we are happy with our first album because it is the best we could give to the people.
Musically, it has a lot of energy with strong basses and breaks. It is a way to create sound without using melodies like a lead in the front but instead with breaks and power. We think that it is an evolution in the sound nowadays for the dark scene, but this is only our personal point of view on our sound.
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Q 5 – Are you planning to tour the world with this album and if so have you any definite bookings yet?
A – A world tour would be cool. One of the reasons why we started to create music is to see the world. We get many credits now with our album release, so let’s see. For now, we are planning to do the next tours:
October 08 – November08: Europe
December 08: Australia
January 09: Brazil and Mexico
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Q 6 – Dan, apart from being half of Whicked Hayo you are also very heavily involved in two psychedelic tribal projects, Juno Reactor and Hilight Tribe. I have not personally heard any of this music (yet!) but from what I have been told it is very pioneering stuff. Please tell us more about this other passion of yours.
A – Our other passion is tribal sound coming from Mother Earth. Many tribes in this world were using tribal sound to create their music and rhythms. If we are looking back at tribes’ histories, each tribe had its own sound by sharing their knowledge on different instruments from generation to generation. At each ritual they created a specific sound using only instruments. The way they played and the mathematical algorithms they used have been studied already for centuries with the end goal being to bring people into a trance state. These musical rituals only with acoustic music played for hours and hours can bring you into a trance but in a NATURAL WAY.
Due to our passion we started to get close to artists like Juno Reactor and Hilight Tribe. These artists in particular have the same values as us with regard to this question.
We started to work with Hilight Tribe two years ago and we became the new co-producers of their last album, released in November 2008.
This year I became Juno Reactor’s tour manager for the whole world except Japan, USA and Mexico. For now, we are preparing a big world tour for 2009.
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Q 7 – There seem to be quite a lot of good quality Belgian acts on the scene at the moment, Melorix, Azidax and Pzyko to name just a few. How is the darkpsy scene in Belgium generally?
A – Pzyko and I started to make the first dark psytrance parties in Belgium with Femina Mandragora. In 2002 we brought artists like Grapes Of Wrath, Jahbo, Texas Fagott, and Kindzadza. After two years we had a big explosion of people who started to like dark psytrance more and more. Nowadays in Belgium we have around 8 organisations doing dark gatherings each weekend.
As for Belgium, indeed, we have many talents who will become more and more involved in the scene and start to play all over the world. We also have some dark psytrance artists immigrating to Belgium, like Neuromotor, Jellyheadz and Mind Distortion System who here to optimise their sound quality.
Personally I think that the reason that they immigrated to our country is because we still have good chocolates haha :)
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Q 8 – Darkpsy is the label that has been slapped upon our music, though personally I prefer the description full power night time psytrance. It is a debate that has been going on almost since the expression was first coined, so, do you like the term ‘darkpsy’?
A – I prefer to call it energetic dance music, but everybody has his (or her) own vision. I don’t like categories because they don’t help the evolution of music. For us, our passion is to mix all the sounds of the world, take from all styles and create something new. This is our aim as producers.
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Q9 - What would you say is your best party memory so far as an artist and why?
A – At the CCCP party 2007 when 500 people started to sing Happy Birthday for me. I start to cry. Also at Gaia Concept after party in Paris when I met my girl Kim.
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Q10 - Lastly, would you please give us your top artist choices at the moment?
A -
1. Electrypnose
2. Psykovsky
3. Terranoise
4. Kindzadza
5. Aphex Twin
6. Squarepusher
7. Amon Tobin
8. Osom
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