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hyperiondrivehyperiondrive.bandcamp.com/releases
Hyperion Drive is an electronic band of settings, a singing duo of dreamed up places at the edge of a flattened Earth - their music comes from a verdant holler nestled deep in the mountains, it comes from a sheet-metal-walled former auto garage underneath the Manhattan Bridge, it comes from a tiny clapboard house in a stony New England field, it comes from a Pacific shoreline. Or, rather, the music lives transmissions between these settings, in echoes and emails, in drum machine radio signals ever bouncing out and up into a deep dark universe, as much about outer space as the space between two people.
Alice Tolan-Mee (New Yorker, teacher) and Ethan Woods (Alaskan, arborist) - the two cosmonauts that make up this project - first met as students at a semi-notorious college in Bennington, Vermont where they found that their voices and temperaments braided nicely. They became friends and collaborators and their lives and work continued to intertwine when they then both lived in New York, singing in various ensembles and arrangements (Anawan / Trevor Wilson Vocal Ensemble, the Essential Prayers Project, Rokenri, Ocean Music, to name a few). Though much of the music they performed together is centered on singing, Ethan began dipping his toe into experimentations with samplers and other electronics - flipping little phrases of piano inside out, programming head-bopping drum beats, inventing new words from mashed together sounds - just as life would take Alice out to California and Ethan down to Asheville. Wanting to keep their braid of friendship and work intact - and wanting to dive fully into music made with digital tools - Ethan and Alice bounced the music back and forth over email, fleshing out what was becoming a futuro soap opera, songs translated a dozen times over across satellite bounces. When they finally convened to finish this first iteration of their project they did so at the Cabbage School, a farming education collective in the rolling hills of North Carolina. The result is sleek and slinky, pop hooks buried in bits of icy asteroid debris, two voices hurtling in orbit in a vessel held together by chewing hum. They named themselves after space age warp speed and for the greek god of dawn, their music describes a life lost in the dark cold of the cosmos but where there's always a sun rising, somewhere.
released November 21, 2019
All songs written and produced by Alice Tolan-Mee and Ethan Woods
Trevor Wilson provided additional samples on Your Arms
Matt Evans provided additional drum programming on FORGET/Our Heads
Make Me Smaller contains a sample of Amphibious Assault by Dewanatron
Of Your Leaves contains two field recordings of wind recorded by InspectorJ (
www.jshaw.co.uk)
Vocals were recorded at The Cabbage School in Leicester, NC
Everything else was recorded at Pickles’ Place in Asheville, NC
Album art by Alice Tolan-Mee and Ethan Woods
Design and layout by Benedict Kupstas
Special thanks to Lauren for the constant support and feedback given throughout this process
