Search The Line of Best Fit
Search The Line of Best Fit

HATEM

01 April 2013, 16:00 | Written by Laurence Day

Madrid-based dream-pop quartet HATEM have been causing a stir om Spain, sculpting woozy, sunbleached pop songs, and with their debut Ultraviolet Catastrophe garnering wads of critical acclaim and commercial praise.

Now they’re branching out into international markets, reaching our shores with music as high a calibre as ‘They Won’t Let Me Grow‘, if they keep it up, they’re likely to fare just as well as they have at home.

HATEM have a passion for the poetic, and their nom de plume is actually an acronym hoisted from a line in a Walt Whitman poem: “Hola A Todo El Mundo”, the Spanish translation of “hello to all the world.” The sounds they create glisten with Balearic synths and melodic guitars, and the smoky noises evoke memories of the similarly breezy El Guincho and Polock. It’s a marriage of neo-folk and electronica; the sweet vocal harmonies and lush, vivid effects fuse together in a fantastic amalgam of the two genres. We catch up with the almost entirely mustachioed foursome to give us the rundown on their favourite music, their journey and ‘Ultraviolet Catastrophe’.

Can you tell us about the story of HATEM? Who’s in the band/ what do you all do?

HATEM is the adventure in which many people are involved, but the main characters are the four of us: Ana, Ari, Josh and Álvaro.

How did you form/meet? Can you remember the first song that you all wrote together?

We’ve been together most of our youth in some way. During that time we played in other bands together, we’ve been lovers, friends and many other things. As a friend thing, we started playing together at home disturbing neighbours and making completely crazy songs with infinite parts on them. We listen to them now and they are like a thousand asteroids falling into your ears, it’s hilarious.

What kind of a music scene would you say that you all come from?

We grew up when indie music started in Spain, a quite heterogeneous and strange scene. We always had our eyes on Swedish and American bands. We can say we mainly have our foundations in the mix that comes when you take punk and emocore from the 90s and other classic indie bands. In this huge amount of bands we can randomly name Texas Is The Reason, Sunny Day Real Estate, Refused, Bad Religion, Built To Spill, Dinosaur Jr., etc. But… much rain has fallen since those days.

How would you describe your music to someone who’s not heard you before?

Some kind of lazy nostalgic dancing pop songs that makes you move your shoulders think of the good old days and the better ones that will come.

What or who has influenced your sound and the way that you create music?

It’s almost impossible to name the exact influences. With that amount of music in our brains, who knows what and from where comes influence or inspiration. Lately we realized that all of the music that has passed through our ears during all our life, can suddenly appear in your music. Something dangerous and scary. 30 years of music listening, conscious and unconscious, means a lot of hidden influences, and not all of them can be cool or nice. That’s why we choose carefully what we listen to lately. Now we love things like Beach House, Ryan Hemsworth, Kurt Vile, Delorean, Chromatics, John Talabot, MMOTHS and many, many more.

Do you have a ‘mission statement’ for the band?.

Lets all meet up where your darks and lights face ours.

How did you write and record your album, Ultraviolet Catastrophe?

Like most bands, we worked a lot on the songs to finally make a demo version for the possible record before going to the studio. In that moment, we decided to add a new element that we think could make the difference in our songs. We decided to work with a producer that came from making quite different stuff – hip hop and electronic music. He is David Unison, the hidden member of HATEM, and our hidden treasure. The result is a collision of both worlds, adding to the work of our other producer Luca Petricca. All of that together is Ultraviolet Catastrophe.

Which moments on the album would you say that you’re particularly proud of?

After so many hours spent on the songs, so many changes, doubts, experiments, good decisions, bad decisions… at the end, all that stuff can make you a bit out of your mind. Quite disoriented. After all those things, ending with the record you want and a record you love is quite an accomplishment to be proud of. We are proud of Ultraviolet… and that’s a lot to say.

What’s the reaction been like in Spain?

It’s been great! The sound is quite different from what we were doing on previous records and people over here embraced the change as naturally as we did. We love them for that. We are happy with the things the record is bringing. The album was selected as Best Spanish Record Of The Year by one of the main music publications in Spain, Mondosonoro. All of that is bringing bigger and more interesting shows.

Why did you decide to not sing in Spanish? Why English?

All our musical influences use English and as a matter of coherence we feel much comfortable in that language. Sounds closer to what musically we want to achieve.

How did you go about writing ‘They Won’t Let Me Grow’? What’s the story behind it?

It talks mainly about the struggle of not following the path that others expect from you. It’s about choosing your own path, your own desire line, and how sometimes everything and everyone can plot to make you abandon the direction where those desires are.

The video is really interesting, can you tell us the idea behind it?

The video was made by Brendan Canty from Feelgoodlost. We like his technique of layered images, the fuzzy and colourful filters he usually uses. We followed his work with bands such as Passion Pit, Sigur Rós, MMOTHS… and we just sent him some guidelines about the concepts that we wanted in the video. He worked using what the song and lyrics inspired him and told a story using children as characters. We liked what the video tells about how the “good ones” can behave in a different way from what is expected from them.

What was your first show like? What’s your main memory of it?

Our first show was as supporters of the Swedish band Club 8. We originally didn’t want to do live shows, but it’s impossible to say no to the temptation of showing your music to others. We mainly remember the huge nervousness and the endless thinking about how “unready” and “unprepared” we were.

How have things changed now?

In essence it hasn’t changed much. We make the music we want, for good or worst. But as for most bands as time passes and more people follow you, you start worrying about making better performances, having a greater sound, enjoy the shows with the people, not making mistakes… I think the main change is that we started HATEM as a hobby and during the last few years we think it is the best full time job we can have. We work in that direction but sometimes you realize how difficult it can be.

What have you got planned for the rest of 2013?.

Making new songs for a future EP, enjoying playing at summer festivals and trying to show our music in other places outside Spain. We want to keep it hectic.

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