We’re about 350km by road from Paris and 20 days on from the November 13 terrorist attacks that left 130 dead, including 89 people who had gone to see Eagles Of Death Metal at the Bataclan theatre. That’s only a short distance in both time and geography, and you might expect any band currently playing on French soil to sense heightened security and audience tension.
Not so Glasgow hip hop collective Hector Bizerk. Their appearance in early December at Rencontres Trans Musicales in Rennes was the icing on the cake of what’s been a miraculous year. With 3000 people in the room and the gig broadcast live on French television, this festival-cum-industry-showcase could have been a nervy affair for the Scots, regardless of external circumstances. In the event, though, it was a triumph.
“It was incredible,” reports emcee Louie down the phone the morning after the night before. “The room was absolutely nuts, completely rammed. People were so engaged in what we were doing, they were joining in with the songs that have instantly catchy references on them. It was amazing to hear them singing our songs in a French accent.
“In the afternoon, we did three press conferences with schoolkids who wanted to be involved with journalism and the music industry, and the older ones then came to the gig at night. The publicity around it all has been amazing: people knew who the band were when we were out and about in Rennes in the afternoon.”
So what’s the story with this Glasgow band who are famous in a corner of France but far from household names back home?
Hector Bizerk began life in 2011 when Louie (John Lowis, from Robroyston) and Audrey Tait (from Rutherglen) began playing together during lunchbreaks at the Impact Arts summer music workshops they were leading in Drumchapel. Their first full album release in 2012 set out their stall: titled Drums. Rap. Yes. it pushed Louie’s verbal dexterity and Audrey’s expansive drum technique to the fore, with synth and bass kept to a minimum. By the time follow-up Nobody Seen Nothing emerged in 2013, the band sound was fuller, the lyrics more sharply observational, and it went on to be nominated at the Scottish Album of the Year Awards.
It’s at this point – in the studio and on the live scene – that, for me, Hector Bizerk became one of the most exciting and innovative bands of any genre in Scotland. Rather than rushing out a third album in the SAY Award spotlight, they decided to stagger-release a series of four EPs named after the Glasgow coat of arms. This approach allowed them to push their songwriting and Audrey’s studio production skills further, into areas that wouldn’t have been available inside the confines of a typical album running order. Meanwhile, when playing live, they expanded the full band line-up with visual artist Pearl Kinnear (who completes a graffiti-style painting on stage every gig) and B-boy breakdancer Ibrahim Diko (a Nigerian national with UK residency they’d met at the Solas festival).
Each EP has a different feel: the funky horns of The Fish That Never Swam; the colder soundscapes, performance poetry (including a guest spot by Scotland's makar Liz Lochhead) and accompanying film of The Bird That Never Flew; the pinpoint character portraits in the lyrics of The Bell That Never Rang; the collaborations (including SAY Award-winner RM Hubbert) on The Tree That Never Grew. EPs one, three and four will be gathered in album form next April with EP two included as a DVD.
Fingers are also crossed that Hector Bizerk’s 2015 stage collaboration with Birds Of Paradise theatre company, a soundtrack to the play Crazy Jane, will return in revitalised form in 2016. The story of a 19th-century can-can dancer who suffered mental illness and was locked up in an asylum, it provided a creative challenge for the band. The initial idea of delivering four or five songs for the show grew into a full album (released in June as The Waltz Of Modern Psychiatry) that turns concepts of voyeurism and misogyny on their heads.
“There are a lot of themes in the story that are relevant to today, to Glasgow, to anywhere, the way women are still treated in society,” notes Louie when I catch up with the band face to face in their home town.
“It’s set in Paris but has this narrative from us going all the way through it, with a Scottish voice, and that just brings it home to people,” adds Audrey. “Although there’s dancing and some bits are melodramatic or funny, when the songs come on, and it’s Louie’s voice, and he says something like ‘social worker’, it makes it real for people.”
Hector Bizerk know that, for a band of their size, they’re in a privileged position, with 24/7 access to a rehearsal space and a studio available at short notice at Paulshalls in Cumbernauld. Other band members have to hold down day jobs but the core duo, both now 28, have managed to make the jump to becoming full-time musicians.
“For me it got to a tipping point in April this year,” says Louie. “I was running a community arts organisation in Possil and it was really fantastic, a great opportunity to work with so many people across Glasgow and provide free workshops like parkour and hip hop and breakdance. We worked with classical musicians, we had a skiffle orchestra which performed at Celtic Connections last year – that stuff really inspired me and got me out of my bed. But it was impossible to continue to do this and be in the band.”
Outside of Hector Bizerk, Audrey teaches drumming and has been at the production desk for ska band Esperanza’s forthcoming album, as well as other acts. Together they’ve also set up Breathe Underwater Artist Management, looking after young buzz talents Bella And The Bear and Be Charlotte. “We’ve made mistakes along the way,” Louie admits, “and I think you probably learn more from your failures than from your successes. If we can help younger emerging acts to not make those mistakes then that’s great. The steep learning curves that we’ve experienced can be imparted on to other people.”
Hector Bizerk are themselves managed by one of the most experienced heads in the business, Adrian Hunter, who also has The View, Babyshambles and The Libertines on his roster. But in terms of releasing records, Hector Bizerk are as independent as they come, with much of their music available in physical form only via their website or at their gigs.
“Is Hector Bizerk ever going to sign to a major recording label?” asks Louie rhetorically. “Probably not. Are we ever going to aspire to write the type of music that is going to invite that sort of investment? I don’t think so. But it doesn’t mean we’re not capable of writing that sort of music: it’s just that Hector Bizerk isn’t that type of band. We’re just taking an idea and running with it. We’re not trying to fit into any particular market or brand or genre. We’re taking elements of punk and elements of dub and elements of everything, really, that we like and sampling it.”
There were notes of interest this year from America, notably after they played three sets, including the NME Showcase, at the South By Southwest festival in Austin in March. And no, a Scottish accent is not a hurdle for the US music industry to overcome.
“We’ve been to a lot of places now,” says Audrey, “and the only people who seem to talk about the accent, almost in a negative sense, are here and in London. In America they love it. Imagine Louie rapping in an American accent – would that not just be stupid if he’s from Blackhill? Arctic Monkeys sing with their accent but they don’t get called ‘English’ indie. Scotland seems to be the only place that labels this ‘Scottish’ hip hop.”
“The cultural ethos of hip hop is often misunderstood in the UK,” Louie argues. “Those misogynistic lyrics – that’s not hip hop. That’s pop music that has rap elements to it. It goes against the grain of everything hip hop is supposed to represent: togetherness, unity, comment, a desire to make things better through music, through poetry, through breakdance, through delivering a message on a graffiti wall.”
Those are the things that Hector Bizerk bring to every recording and to every stage. It’s what they brought to a gig in Rennes at a particularly emotional time in France.
“I think we’re doing a pretty good job of convincing people who tell us ‘I don’t like hip hop but that was great!’” says Louie. “No, actually you really do like hip hop. You don’t like the bastardisation of hip hop in pop culture. That’s what you don’t like.”
Hector Bizerk play Central Hall, Edinburgh as part of the Neu! Reekie! Xmaskracker on Thursday [Dec 17]
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