We covered their fab new single ‘Gone’ last week. Now we get to know Hi Motive with our range of probing questions.
Find out how the band came to be, how they chose the name and what evil plans they’re hatching for future world domination.
It’s all right here in our latest feature!
1. Name : HI MOTIVE.
2. Where are you based? We’re based in the inner west of Sydney, Australia.
3. Who are your members? Matt Rowe and Ed Rose.
4. And what role do they play in the band? In terms of the creative process, we share a lot of the load with writing and refining our music. But Matt is the vocalist for our duo while Ed is the producer and lead percussionist.
5. How did you choose your band name? We wanted to pick a name that hinted at some dark mystery but ultimately was ambiguous, such that we could let the music and branding define the project. We made a list of final names, put our unreleased tracks on the speakers and thought this one resonated the most.
6. Give us five words to best describe the band. That’s a tough one. Electric, synthy, airy, moody, deep?
7. How was the band formed? We used to live down the hall from each other at college, and became close mates while living there together. We moved out and started writing music together in 2015 and we experimented with a variety of sounds. We started off in the softer indie electronica space, before transitioning a little deeper into HI MOTIVE.
8. Tell us a little bit about your sound. We always say to each other that we want our sound to have both a level of energy and drive that will compel people to dance to it, but also have a depth and reflective element that will allow our listeners to find a deeper connection to it.
9. If you had to compare yourselves to an already established act sound-wise, who would it be? Our sound is influenced by a number of talented Australian and international electronic acts. Powerhouses like Hayden James, Rüfüs Du Sol and Golden Features have had a profound impact on our understanding of the Australian electronic space, while international acts like Odesza, Gorgon City and Zhu have also heavily inspired us.
10. In what ways has the band changed from when it was formed to today? The two of us wrote our first song together back in 2015. It was actually inspired by the song ‘Intro’ by The XX and, to be perfectly honest, it was terrible. We essentially added every single vocal effect we could find, and had a thousand clashing sounds, but our ears were so underexposed to electronic music production at that point that we loved it at the time. It still sits in our archive but it’ll never see the light of day.
We’ve changed our sound a lot since then, to a more deeper and electronic dance space rather than the indie electronic scene we were initially aiming for, and this has probably reflected the way our music tastes have also evolved over that time too.
11. What are your members’ favourite songs of all time? For Matt it would likely be ‘Sweet Disposition’ by The Temper Trap – we actually played it a number of times as our final song in a band at uni in which Matt was the singer and Ed the drummer.
On the other hand, Ed’s most favourite of recent memory would be Matt Corby’s ‘Monday’. Such a great construction of soulful layered vocals which is somehow able to loop on itself and seem like a neverending glorious sonic experience.
12. Which song from history do you all wish you’d written? ‘September’ by Earth, Wind and Fire – is it even possible for anyone to feel anything but love for that song?
13. What’s been the biggest highlight of your band’s journey so far? Having our most recent track ‘Gone’ aired on Triple J was a pretty momentous experience for the two of us. Getting played on the radio was a key goal the both of us talked about right back on the first day we started writing music together. And to have that goal realised, particularly given it was on the day of release for the song, was pretty surreal to be honest.
14. What’s been your strangest experience as a band? Probably the strangest experience we’ve found is how hot Matt gets in the studio just from singing. It’ll be in the dead of winter, Ed has three layers on and there’s cool air blowing through the cracks of the window, and yet Matt starts to lay down his vocals and in three minutes he’s got his shirt off and is sweating head to toe. The problem here is that because the microphone is so sensitive, we can’t turn a fan or the air conditioner on, so Matt is just left there to suffer.
15. Who’s your most passionate groupie? Is it fair to pick favourites? It would probably have to be all the housemates who’ve lived with us over the past few years. They’re the ones who have had to put up with our practice sessions, they’re the ones who help us set up and pack up at our shows, and they’re the ones who bite their tongues when we’re up late and Matt is trying out new melodies at the top of his lungs. But there are so many other supportive friends that we really couldn’t survive without.
16. Are you hotel trashers, cup of tea drinkers or somewhere in between? We’ve never really understood where the thrill comes from when trashing a hotel (yet). With that being said, we did recently stay in Wollongong for a concert – we spent half a day cleaning the house before we left yet still managed to get a scathing review on Ed’s AirBNB account. Needless to say, Ed’s account is no longer the one we use to book our rooms with anymore.
17. If you could score the support slot for any act, who would you choose? ZHU was one of the first sets we saw together when starting to write electronic music, so we think it would be a pretty unreal experience if we managed to support him. But at this stage of our career, the opportunity to support any act that’s had more experience than us would be incredible.
18. Tell us about your latest release. We wrote ‘Gone’ around a year ago and it was written with a particular idea about the emotional evolution you go through during the breakdown of a relationship. The track is based around a sad topic but we wanted to bring some brighter energy to the track with the chorus to signify the energy that can come when you’ve begun moving on.
19. What do your plans for global superstardom involve? We’re not quite sure what that looks like yet, but anything that involves new experiences, travel, growing our sound, meeting other artists and new fans is something that we’ll grab with both hands.
WEBSITE : www.himotivemusic.com
FACEBOOK : www.facebook.com/himotivemusic
INSTAGRAM : www.instagram.com/himotivemusic
SOUNDCLOUD : https://soundcloud.com/himotive
YOUTUBE : https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCw43tqrZPKb8sz0IkqtuMZA
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