art of hot: Hyperdelicious!

A little back-story is probably in order here, for those who came in late. A long, long time ago in the early 90's, those wavy, rave-ey days of summers past, the first musical project involving the team that eventually became "art of hot" was "Hyperdelicious", the audio arm of "Hyperdelic Video" (which we really don't have time to get into right now, trust us, we could devote a whole book to telling THAT bizarre tale).

It should be pointed out that this was before the age of computers, when all the sounds were made by people actually playing real instruments and synthesizers and the sounds were recorded on reel to reel or dat machines. Overdubs were usually achieved by bouncing tracks (or ping-ponging) as we didn't have access to a multi-track machine (an expensive device at the time, even a humble four track still cost the same as a used car). Drums were usually made by the trusty Roland 909, and the one sampler we had could play back about two seconds of audio at any one time. Most of the tracks were pretty much recorded live, doing things by the skin of our teeth and the seat of our pants, often with gear that was either busted or borrowed, scrounged from thrift stores and rescued from flea markets, held together with mazes of wire, bits of electrical tape and dumb luck.

That being said, when re-listening to this material while collating it for uploading onto the internet, we were more than pleasantly surprised by the quality and scope of the tracks. After 15 years or more of sitting gathering dust in the archives they hold up very well indeed.

Also, our deep respect and eternal acknowledgment must go to some of our collaborators appearing here who have moved on to greener postures - Reed Banals (of the "Look See" lightshow, a fixture in the SF rave scene at that time), who has since moved on to greater success in Portland, and Rich (who laid down some fine percussion tracks on some of the better "Dubtribe Soundsystem" 12 inches from around the same time) who returned back to England to pursue fame and fortune in his home country.

We here at "art of hot" HQ hope you will enjoy these cuts for what they are. They're not going to win any awards, but they don't suck either, and do give some insight into our humble but enthusiastic beginnings.

Think of them, if you will, as a snapshot of another time, a simpler and perhaps more optimistic time, before these fast paced days of cell phones and hi-speed broadband and identity theft, of wall-to-wall surveillance cameras and piracy on both the internet and the high seas, back to the good old/bad old days, the all-or-nothing days when all you need to throw a party was an empty warehouse, a sound system (usually Sean Murray's), a bunch of records, a map-point and a bunch of crazy kids who just wanted to have a good time in the dark.