- B Ok (ft. Essa V) Hyper Lion 2:56
Hyper Lion, originally from London and now living in LA, is best known as 1/2 of Pariis Opera House. Pariis Opera House have remixed for Island Records, gaining the support of Lauren Laverne, Nemone and Tom Robinson at BBC 6Music with the release of their single DRAGNDROP. They supported Example, Zane Lowe and Edith Bowman at U.K. festivals and clubs, while soundtracking Hollywood films, adverts, video games and TV shows.
As a solo artist Hyper Lion has released 5 EPs (Red7, Mt, Yo Miro, Lax, Pander), 2 LPs (Submariner, Submariner 2), and a live remix album (DIN). He has co-written and co-produced with Jake Gosling, NUUXS, and Lakes.
The album was pieced together using unconventional techniques during the pandemic. The resulting patchwork is both informed by, and reflects, the stress and uncertainty of modern times, but delivers an ultimately hopeful message.
“I’d had the basic concept in my head for 5 years; the aesthetic, the atonality, the polyrhythms, the linear structure. I’d just not had the time to make it a reality. When lockdown started I used my free time to crank out as much of the project as I could. Then pandemic blues hit and I lost motivation. The record sat gathering dust for 18 months until I rediscovered it earlier this year. Then it clicked. All the stress, fatigue, and uncertainty of the past two years imprinted itself in the music. It concurrently seeks reassurance in sounds of the past (I sample tracks I recorded 20 years ago from worn-out cassettes), whilst striding forward over new, unstable musical terrain.
The journey is meandering and perilous, comfortingly underpinned by the mantra that everything will be okay in the end. The notion of being lost in the darkness and finding your way back to the light is reflected in the composition. The inception of each track was built around an element of randomness, coincidence or chance. Sometimes I’d assign notes or chords to a random number generator, other times I’d literally mash my hand on the keyboard. The challenge was to take the resulting chaos and reign it in, sculpting it into something more palatable without losing the nuance of what made the original idea compelling. It’s a reaction to the mainstream, where things are boring, repetitive and predictable by design, where ego takes itself seriously. I wanted to make something fun that’s unlike anything you’ve heard before.
The album is structured like a schizophrenic mixtape, never quite letting you find your feet or catch your breath. Sometimes there’s no downbeat. Sometimes there’s no discernible melody or harmony. One minute it’s pop, the next it’s jazz. It’s disorienting. But peppered throughout are motifs that reprise to give some semblance of finality and comfort.”
SOURCE: Official Bio