Interview: Exploring Hybrasil's new audio visual live concept and his evolution as a live performer and supporter of the next generation
It is clear why over the years we have constructed a strong connection with Irish live act, studio engineer, and Elevator Program founder, Hybrasil. His sheer passion and innovative way of challenging the boundaries of his sound and creative flows is exactly what we search for here at Awesome Soundwave. In fact, it is what we live for.
Alongside his extensive output, and evolving his 360 tuition services to up and coming producers, the Berlin based artist recently embarked on a new project - “Drones From The Island”. The audio visual project recently debuted at Cork City Hall, allowing Hybrasil a chance to experiment and challenge himself, after several years of working behind the scenes. Dive in and find out more below, this is our recent catch up with ASW regular, Hybrasil…
Hybrasil deep in focus
Image by Mario Pinta.
Hi Will, thanks for joining us here on the ASW blog. How has 2023 been for you so far? Where are you based at the moment?
Thanks for having me, I’m still based in Berlin and working between here and Dublin. 2023 has been good so far. It's been a year of change in terms of technical approach and studio workflow. I’ve worked really hard to get out of my comfort zone and experiment with new techniques, new machines and new plugins for mixing and mastering. I find it helpful to reboot my creative process once every year or two. This pushes me to try new things and ultimately leads to more varied results in terms of sonic texture, synthesis and composition. I’ve worked with some really nice hardware such as the Erica Synths Perkons Drum Synth and The Elektron Analog RYTM.
“It’s been a year of change in terms of technical approach and studio workflow. I’ve worked really hard to get out of my comfort zone and experiment with new techniques, new machines and new plugins for mixing and mastering. I find it helpful to reboot my creative process once every year or two.”
Let’s kick off with your latest project, an audio visual project titled “Drones From The Island”, tell us a bit about how the project came to life. What is the concept behind it and how was the inaugural show at Cork City Hall?
‘Drones from the Island’ has been three years in the making. The concept behind the show draws inspiration from Celtic mythology, ancient civilizations, and ancient technology, merging these themes with modern music technology and Detroit influenced Techno Futurism. It started as a series of visual concepts that accompanied my debut release with Awesome Soundwave (Dezik 2021) and We Don’t Flip EP on Rekids (2020). Visually it's a creative collaboration with Tom Hodgkinson on SHOP, who have worked with artists such as Stormzy and The Gorillaz.
I premiered the show as part of ‘Culture Night’ at Cork City Hall, a historic building in the centre of Cork City in Ireland. The event was in collaboration with the Arts Council and the Electronic Music Council. This show took a different approach than my usual live performances which are driven by hardware. I returned to working with a laptop, I used Ableton for the performance side and Resolume for the visual performance and I used the new Ableton Push 3 Controller to drive the performance. Ableton and Resolume work really well together thanks to Max For Live.
Do you have other shows already scheduled for this?
Right now I am working on the London premiere, which is taking place on Friday January 26th at E1. They have an incredible LED set up there, so we are working on adapting the visuals for that right now.
We know you are always making fresh and innovative sounds, what is your schedule looking like in terms of releases? Anything you can enlighten our readers about? We look forward to having you back on the label.
I’m fortunate to have the opportunity to work with some incredible labels such as yourselves. I’ve had a pretty intense year this year with releases on Rekids, We Are The Brave, Uncage and my Hybrasil Music label. I have a new album with Awesome Soundwave coming in 2024 and we have also been working on a vinyl release. I have an EP collaboration with Radio Slave coming out on Rekids next year, featuring remixes from my debut album ‘Embers’ which was released on Rekids in 2019. I have a series of LIVE EP releases coming out on my Hybrasil Music label, which were all recorded at HBL Studios in Berlin.
How are things going with your Elevator Program project? For our readers that do not know, Elevator Program is an eLearning platform for electronic music producers with inbuilt social media, user app and record label for graduates.
Elevator Program has grown steadily in the past year, we now have over 4500 members and 2023 has been our best year to date. We have a lot of new artists joining the platform, the record label has released some incredible music this year from murademura, Julia Tamzyn, Olympias, KERZ and we had our first Beatport number 1 in August, with ETHOS, who joined us as a beginner in 2022. His debut EP ‘Devil’s Paradise’ topped the Beatport Techno Raw Deep Hypnotic Chart.
I built Elevator Program as a platform I wish I had access to when I started out. I have distilled over 15 years of music production and sound engineering experience into the program and we’ve already helped a lot of artists take that important step from learning their craft to releasing music.
The Record label has been an important outlet for members of the platform and we have recently relaunched our Artist Development Program, which onboards every 2 months.
On the engineering side of things, what have you been working on of late?
In addition to my client work, I master all of the releases that go out on the Elevator Program and Hybrasil Music labels. I also help some Elevator artists with their mixing and post production. Coming out of the pandemic I did a lot of Live Tech work, with Octave One and with Awesome Soundwave Live at Awakenings last year and 2023 has been more grounded in the studio which has helped me allocate time to the audio visual project. One of my favourite client projects is mastering Podcasts for Berghain resident Boris, incredible music.
Of course, we can not run an interview without discussing our one true love, playing live. How is your current set up looking?
The current Hybrasil LIVE setup is powered by two Elektron Octatrack Samplers, a Roland TR8 Drum Machine and the Elektron Analog RYTM. I’ve worked with some really nice hardware this year, so I might do a reshuffle in 2024. Over the past year, I’ve been doing 3 hour hardware live sets at Sisyphos in Berlin, in the Hammahalle room. This is an incredible space to test new material and to push the live set forward. The crowd there is really amazing and receptive to experimentation. Thanks to this experience, my live show has evolved considerably. My compositions are a feedback loop between live performance and the studio, so right now I’m writing music that works specifically for that space.
Lastly, can you leave us with one of your favourite tracks from the graduates of your Elevator Program label?
I love this track from ETHOS, it's called ‘Stropharia’ and it’s from his debut release Devil’s Paradise. This EP is an incredible debut and to get to number one on Beatport with it was a huge achievement.
Thanks for being a part of the ASW family!
Thanks for your support!
▶ Learn more about Hybrasil and his releases on Awesome Soundwave here.
▶ Find out more about Hybrasil here: