Italians Hund are the latest shoegaze entity to emerge from the continent with their mesmerising live shows capturing attention as they mix pop melodies with more experimental sounds and structures.
Curious to learn more BSM had a chat with the band.
Q – Hey guys, it’s really nice to speak with you. Firstly, introduce yourself to us.
A – Alessandro: We are a band made of 4 young guys: Nicola and Alessandro at the guitars, Federico sings and plays bass and Nicoló at the drums. Different songs came from different approaches, sometimes Nicola brings a riff and we start working on that, sometimes we’re jamming and the ideas are born spontaneously, after that we work to refine structures and details.
Q- It’s an unusual name to a British ear, is there meaning behind it?
A – Nicola: To be honest no, no hidden meaning, we just thought it sounded cool!
Q – So what are your inspirations; musically or otherwise?
A – Alessandro: I’ve been very inspired by American minimalism, artists like Terry Riley, Steve Reich and Philip Glass completely caught my attention when I was in high school. I also loved math rock for a period, and maybe that’s audible in our works.
Nicola: I was like crazy for Animal Collective.
Federico: My biggest influences were all the feelings in that period, a slice of teeny moment of life based on young love delusions and nightlife in Venice. Musically a lot of club music, 80’s jangly pop and minimalist art currently.
Nicolò: My most important influence is new wave music; but I started playing drums when I discovered 70’s and 80’s funk music such as Herbie Hancock and James Brown. As you can hear, dream pop influenced us a lot but there are many different influences in our music brought by personal taste. When we play together we usually try to balance each individual personal taste in order to create something new.
Q – You have a new single out, Matches, tell us about it?
A – Federico: I remember very well how we came up with Matches. I had just bought a drum machine and I was so happy like a child with a new toy! On that occasion our drummer wasn’t able to came too rehearsal with us so we just used that instead. I was heavily out for house and club music in general and the first thing I did was put a 4/4 909 kick and played that bass line and bam – the song wrote itself! In the studio all the songs were recorded live and we overdubbed only the vocals, with a very old school sounding result.
Q – How would you sum up your sound in one sentence for the uninitiated?
A – Nicola: Dream pop played with a punk attitude.
Q – Nice! Any tour plans?
A – Nicola: Hopefully Europe, one day… We don’t know, in Italy we’ll play on 15th November at Argo16 with The Underground Youth, and the 25th November at Astro Club with Matt Holliwood and The Bad Feelings.
Q – What’s next for Hund?
A -Nicola: We’re planning the release of our first LP in spring 2018, on cassette and CD.
Q – Is there a goal for Hund?
A -Alessandro: The goal is to keep on doin’ it, like Hancock said.
