Album Interviews: HYPOPHORA - Douse (2018)

1. What can you say about this new EP/CD?

Douse is our first ever full length album. We’ve been a band for over 6 years now so it’s about time this happened. The record features music that was written weeks before the studio session and music that was written weeks after we formed back in 2012. It’s an incredibly rich and diverse album that ventures in a bunch of different directions at any one time. We’re very proud of it and can’t wait to share.

2. What is the meaning of the EP/CD name?

Douse

daʊs/

verb

1. pour a liquid over; drench.

2. extinguish (a fire or light).

"he doused the car with petrol and set it on fire"

To ‘douse’ something is to soak or drench something. We were inspired by the paintings we asked our friend Bonnie at bmcodesign to cook up. They were so beautifully colourful and flowed really nicely. We said the artwork looked like a canvas ‘doused’ in colour. It felt like this record was doused in creativity and musicality. We wanted to go with a short, punchy album title as our band name is pretty long and ‘douse’ has the bonus of sounding phonetically interesting too. We didn’t think too much about the relevance the album title has to the music but as a concept throughout it seemed fitting.

3. Which one is the composer of the CD/EP?

We all composed this album. Some songs were worked on more by others and some were written before current members had joined but the album itself was composed as a group. Even the tracks that were written back in the day have had their original parts re-written to fit our current vibe, so everyone’s had a massive impact on this album. We’re all pretty hands on with songwriting.

4. If you have to pick one song, which one would you pick?

Karum - I’d pick ‘Cars Run On Friendship’ as it’s the most adventurous and interesting song on the album for me - goes in so many different directions that makes it rather progressive.

Katie - It’s a difficult one, I’m torn between 2… I think I’ll go with ‘Chemical X’ because it’s a different mood for us. I definitely enjoyed recording the vocals for this track the most. There’s loads of different vocal layers and I was just having loads of fun trying out different things as it’s one of our newest compositions.

James - I think my favourite track would have to be ‘Etiolate’ - the riff in that track really goes in hard, and the bridge section at the end really messes with people’s heads. That’s always good fun to play.

5. Is there a special message in this EP/CD?If there is what it is?

Most of the older tracks are about teen angst, growing up, figuring out where your place in the world is; whereas a lot of the newer ones are about real life experiences, relationships and in some cases questioning authority. Due to the fact that the songs span over so many years, there’s no intentional message for the album as a whole, but themes have always revolved around being yourself, sticking to your guns and being strong!

6. Are there some lyrics that you´d love to share?

‘Chemical X’ contains some of the most poignant lyrics for me:

Don’t care if you’re 21 or 41, I won’t have you doing that on your own 

Different if I had a son, a girl is never safe alone

I also like the repeated phrase in ‘To Hear; Listen’:

My mind was clear, no one lingered here

7. Which inspirations haven been important for this album ? Like musically or friends, family, someone you'd love to thanks specially?

It’s a massive collection of our own personal influences so it’s hard to pinpoint anything really, although there’s definitely a big 90’s alt influence - bands like the Chili Peppers, Incubus, Foo Fighters and Alice In Chains. There’s quite a large Post Hardcore influence too, stuff like early Lower Than Atlantis, At The Drive In and even The Mars Volta.

I think the general inspiration of watching and listening to our favourite bands, artists and musicians had a big role in this. The idea that this album is a summary of the past 6 years as a band is pretty inspiring as well.. It’s a kind of coming of age gift from ourselves to... ourselves!