With the next London Air event just round the corner, we thought we would catch up with our old friends, Hyper, to get the lowdown on what's coming up, to see what inspires the crazy things they do, as well as to get a feeling of what to expect from them on Saturday Night...

Can you sum up Hyper Live experience to someone who has never seen you before.
An energetic fusion of rock and electronic music with an aim of getting hot and sweaty!

Where did the name 'Hyper' come from? Is it reflective of your personality?
Yes, sometimes:-) I was working for a promo company many moons ago called Hyperactive and I nicked the name from there when I was put on the spot about a flyer going to press.

What do you do when you're not writing music or touring?
Cook, play sport and read a lot but I write every day these days if I'm not DJing so these are my evening activities.

Name 3 things you can't live without.
Tea
Books
Laptop

What do you think you’d be doing if you’d chosen a path other than music?
Something to do with history as it fascinates me at school the only thing I really wanted to be was an archaeologist.

What was your first job?
Lab Technician.

Your live albums cover a broad range of styles, what do think has been the most important track from the vault of the past, in influencing the Hyper Live sound?
Without doubt, 'We Control'. I feel it defined our sound and put Hyper on the production map. It's sums up the energy of the band and our influences.

Where do you draw your inspiration from in today’s music?
Where to start. I love The Futureheads, The Kills, that kind of thing in modern pop/rock and will admit to still liking bands like Metallica from my youth. From dance music I feel more inspired by the likes of DIOYY, Doly Anol, Tronik Youth and Sebastian at the minute. The fusing of electronic music with rock ideas and arrangements is exciting.

Where do you see the Hyper Live sound going over the next few years?
We'll have to wait and see, 'Suicide Tuesday' is the new album which comes out this month which is an extension of 'We Control' and sees us experimenting with faster tempos than usual as well as a mixture of vocal sounds. We are working on a very different project at the moment which gives us a change of scenery and is nice to take a break from the presumed pressure of album writing.

What advise would share with aspiring DJs, producers, and interior decorators?
Work hard and believe in what you do. Keep the faith! Interior decorators: come and work for me for a couple weeks, got a lot needs doing!

Previously there had a been a strong relationship between breaks and progressive house, with artists like BT making breaks, Bedrock starting up "Bedrock Breaks" and your own contribution towards the "Y3K" albums which were on the deeper side of breaks, however, nowadays breaks seems to lean more towards an upfront electro house sound. Why do you think this is, how is it affecting the scene?
I like it, I think it sums up where the sound is at the moment. At the time when I came up with the idea of Y3K, I wanted to give a voice to a scene through a comp and show the diversity within the genre and show that many producers not know for Breaks were making them. It so happened that a lot of these people came from a Prog house background and that genre was exciting at that time. That said there were many other people who wrote for that album from drum n bass etc including the likes of T Power and BLIM etc. I think the changes in sound just mean that people are excited by something different and like a new challenge. I don't subscribe to the one genre policy to the exclusion of everything else. It's just silly. I guess there are some who also see more money in that genre too... It's not really the Electro House sound that really inspires me though tbh.

Having played in an impressive number of countries, which has been the best experience, and which country has the craziest fans?
Japan has the craziest fans and my favourite gig was at Exit festival a few years ago playing after Timo Maas to thousands on a castle wall as the sun came up. Amazing.

What's coming up in the world of Hyper?
As I mentioned, 'Suicide Tuesday' the album is coming out this month and the first single 'Centre Attraction', has just come out with two amazing remixes by GeRM and South Central. Then there should be an album of sounds, drums, presets etc that people can pick up for production purposes. After that there will be another album project but not one thats going to see a commercial release. Our remix of 'Higher State Of Consciousness' by South Central is also coming soon.

What do you feel you are yet to achieve?
Well I'd love to go into writing music for film, we've done a fair bit for TV shows and it's a challenge I would enjoy.

Are you looking forward to playing at Air?
Can't wait! Am rehearsing myself as I write. There are a load of people coming out and we love playing Cargo so it should be great fune! See you there!

Interview by Josie Talbot

Air fire up the cold season with the awesome HYPER (LIVE), who wil be playing alongside our resident Air-Heads.

Cargo, London, Saturday 4th October 2008

More info at airrecordings.com

Don’t forget you can grab advance tickets from here to avoid the queue, and ensure admittance.

Hope to see you there.
Davro_C