Roots of Hacker Farm

Ahead of the Hacker Farm exclusive on IC Radio next week, I spoke to them about their influences, motivations and what’s coming up next. Kek W ably walked me through the HF ethos.

Punk Bucket

We’ve all known one another since the Punk Era – we grew up during that period, so Punk as well as Glam, Space Rock and Psych etc. have informed our sensibilities in a big way, as well as early UK Industrial and, much later on, early Acid House and Techno.... I think we both like that point – probably around the Late 70s – where the energy of Punk segued into electronic music, so you get tracks where guitar-based Punk and Garage bands started using homemade electronics or cheap/kit synths... and you end up with these odd, cool little hybrid tracks that still sound pretty amazing today, probably because the bands didn’t actually know what they were doing or they didn’t have the budget or studio-time to over-think it or –equally important – because, at that point, there were no rules... the music hadn’t solidified into rigid, formularised genres yet. But you also have the first singles by more electronics-orientated groups / artists like The Normal, Robert Rental, Cabaret Voltaire, Vice Versa etc... it was an exciting and very inspirational time to have lived through. But, having said that – and as much as we love the open-ended energy of those artists – we’ve no real interest in re-enacting that era; we try as hard as we can to sound like us (laughs)...

Konrad

Yes, the title Konrad is a reference to Cluster / Kluster. It was a nod to the late, great Conrad Schnitzler, who set up the Zodiak Arts Lab and was a founding member of Tangerine Dream in their crazed, early freak-out days when they were as much influenced by Hendrix as the possibilities afforded by electronic experimentation. And some of the early Cluster sides are pretty harsh too... Cluster ‘71 (recorded after he left) is really noisy and aggressive; you could play it next to something by Throbbing Gristle, but it predates it by about 6 years.... it’s a misconception that Hippy electronic music is all passive, docile and gutless... some of it is very much in yer face (laughs); Germany was a hot bed of radical politics, music and art in the late 60s and early 70s, and Conrad was at the heart of that scene. He never stopped experimenting, was way ahead of the curve. He made tracks in the 70s that Richard James would kill to have made. Timeless stuff.

Engine Room

Kek: …There has never, hand on heart, ever been any sort of plan whatsoever with any of this (laughs) - nothing beyond an initial chat over a couple pints where we decided that “maybe we should do something at some point”. “Something noisy.” (laughs) Because we’ve all known each other so long, things just, sort of, fell into place of their own accord. Because, it really has been that loose and unchoreographed, and it was primarily always about doing something fun and ‘social’ - I’d have to say that the real driver of it all was just the act of, you know... doing something. That’s going to sound pretty glib and flimsy, I know (laughs)... but I think that sits at the core of it all: that we wanted to do something - something vague and noisy and mischievous and indeterminate - and if we just said we were forming a band that would cover it broadly enough that no one - especially our wives - would ask too many questions (laughs). …The actual physical ‘in-the-zone’ playing together as a two- or three-piece is at the core of it all. It’s joyous. It’s a selfish thing, I know, but - let’s be honest: we’re a niche act - there’s no money in this game - so you have to enjoy it for all the right personal reasons. It has to be fun or give you some sense of personal growth - which this definitely is / does. Any ‘politics’ probably grow logically out of all that - and also, naturally, from the sense of moral outrage we feel when we see the way this country is being sold off - and out - from within. Our musical and philosophical stance is oppositional, of course; we’re angry and annoyed... but we’re also very positive and fired-up about what we do. …, I hope that people do find a subversive element in what we do, or that it gives them ideas of their own - ways that they themselves can either ‘fight back’ or enrich their own lives. People are content to be passive consumers these days; they consume objects and information without particularly questioning it. We like to disrupt that cycle, we introduce questions or observations into the mix, plant little seeds in people’s minds... that’s part of what we do, but there has to be some personal fun and satisfaction at the core of it all.

Q.U.B.E

We’ve just released a Rubik’s Cube made of QR-Codes that lead you to pages of audio, video and text content. That’s a really cool little project that we started almost a year ago – a way of making digital downloads ‘interesting’ by creating a physical object that you have to engage with and which unlocks content, rather than just pressing a button and getting a kneejerk download ‘freebie’ – we wanted to make people think about the process and engage with it, form a bridge between the analogue and digital worlds. Next up is a split Betamax / DVD release with Libbe Matz Gang, and an HF cassette album on Feral Recordings, which’ll be a slightly ‘softer’, more textural release than UHF, I think. This one may surprise a few people.

An exclusive live recording from Hacker Farm along with a playlist they’ve kindly curated featuring their biggest influences will be played on IC Radio’s own Songs About Nothing – 6pm, Thursday 14th March