Courtesy of the artist.
Conceived as a vehicle for live improvisation, Sydney's HenceTherefore creates viscous, textured experimental techno that explores failure, the nature of work, climate-crisis anxiety and the limits of spontaneity.Using heavily manipulated live vocal samples, clattering percussion and cascading delays, Hence Therefore's unpredictable, spontaneous soundscapes place equal emphasis on full body movement and lofty cerebral highs.THUMP FBi Click's Jemma Cole caught up with Hence Therefore when he recorded a live set for the show recently. Read the interview and listen to the set below.
What are you about?Spontaneity, polyrhythms, using my voice as a synth, and climate-crisis anxiety.Where in the world are you today?At home in Ashfield with a cold.Favourite record of all time?Dunno about all-time, but Lee Gamble's Koch is my favourite from the last couple of years. Full of the kind of beautiful restraint I keep trying to teach myself. Listen to Oneiric Contur, for example. So good.Tell us about the best time you've played live?The Halloween party at my mate Hannah's dingy Chippendale sharehouse last year. The PA was just a 4x10" bass guitar amp. The dance-floor was covered in American Psycho-style clear plastic sheeting. Everyone was in outrageous costumes. Probably the first time I tried doing a set at 140bpm. It was sick.What was the first record you bought?If we're talking CDs, it was probably something awful. But the first actual vinyl record I bought was Wild Beasts' Smother.What's your favourite piece of hardware?The Teenage Engineering OP-1. An absurdly versatile machine about the size of a computer keyboard - synth, sampler, drum machine, sequencer and multi-track recorder all in one. It can be a bit inexact and messy compared to other pieces of hardware but it's been key to accessing the improvisational sweet spot that I'm constantly looking for.What are your thoughts behind the set?I started by singing a line from an Andrei Platonov novel: "Haunted by the task of struggle against ruin". I came across it while reading McKenzie Wark's Molecular Red. I feel like it gets at the paralysis and deferred panic that hangs over everyone's lives at this point in history, but also the determination to survive, to do the work of understanding how to get out of this mess.But then of course the idea is to smear, pitch-shift and cut up those words completely until they become some other sound, and to submerge them in different rhythms. So y'know… I hope you can dance to it and hear something interesting in it. Dance out your anxiety, or hear it reflected back somehow.What's to come from Hence Therefore?We're throwing a 3BS Records x Refactory party August 13 with NZ legend Borrowed CS who'll be playing along side WDK, Mannheim Rocket and myself.Check out Hence Therefore's live set in the flesh at Refractory & 3BS Records present: Borrowed CS (NZ), Hence Therefore, WDK + Mannheim Rocket. More info here.
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What are you about?Spontaneity, polyrhythms, using my voice as a synth, and climate-crisis anxiety.Where in the world are you today?At home in Ashfield with a cold.Favourite record of all time?Dunno about all-time, but Lee Gamble's Koch is my favourite from the last couple of years. Full of the kind of beautiful restraint I keep trying to teach myself. Listen to Oneiric Contur, for example. So good.Tell us about the best time you've played live?The Halloween party at my mate Hannah's dingy Chippendale sharehouse last year. The PA was just a 4x10" bass guitar amp. The dance-floor was covered in American Psycho-style clear plastic sheeting. Everyone was in outrageous costumes. Probably the first time I tried doing a set at 140bpm. It was sick.What was the first record you bought?If we're talking CDs, it was probably something awful. But the first actual vinyl record I bought was Wild Beasts' Smother.What's your favourite piece of hardware?The Teenage Engineering OP-1. An absurdly versatile machine about the size of a computer keyboard - synth, sampler, drum machine, sequencer and multi-track recorder all in one. It can be a bit inexact and messy compared to other pieces of hardware but it's been key to accessing the improvisational sweet spot that I'm constantly looking for.
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You can listen to THUMP on FBi Click here, and stream it live online, every Monday from 8pm-10pm EST.Follow Hence Therefore on Soundcloud.