Interview: Hyder Ali
College does strange things to people. It can take a rapper who only listens to Tupac Shakur and a guitarist whose favorite musician is Ryan Adams and turn them into a dynamic musical duo whose sound couldn’t be further removed from either of their teenage influences. Formed by college buddies Joe Horton (vocals, using the stage name Eric Blair) and Robert Mulrennan (guitar) at the University of Eau Claire in Wisconsin in the early 2000s, Hyder Ali has morphed over the years into an MC-led ambient-rock quartet with a hybrid sound that’s hard to pin down but easy to enjoy, something like Brother Ali sitting in with Halloween, Alaska. Horton, Mulrennan, and drummer Kahlil Brewington talked with Decider in advance of the band’s March 20 Turf Club release show for its promising debut EP, Careless Talk. (Hyder Ali opens; Mel Gibson And The Pants and Kristoff Krane close out the night.)
Decider: As rap handles go, “Eric Blair” certainly isn’t an obvious choice. Why did you select George Orwell’s birth name as your MC nom de plume?
Joe Horton: I’m trying to figure out how to answer without sounding like a literary nerd, but I kind of am. When I tell people where it comes from, they tend to be disappointed. They’re kind of hoping I have some cool backstory where I had to change my name because I was on the run from the law. Choosing an MC handle is kind of a weird thing because it’s like choosing an alter ego. I went through a lot of different ideas and then finally was like, “What am I really into right now?” And I really like George Orwell—he’s my favorite writer. A lot of what he did, sending political messages through allegory, is what I’m trying to do in my songwriting. I also thought there was something interesting about taking someone’s real name who had a pseudonym and using it as my pseudonym.
Decider: As rap handles go, “Eric Blair” certainly isn’t an obvious choice. Why did you select George Orwell’s birth name as your MC nom de plume?
Joe Horton: I’m trying to figure out how to answer without sounding like a literary nerd, but I kind of am. When I tell people where it comes from, they tend to be disappointed. They’re kind of hoping I have some cool backstory where I had to change my name because I was on the run from the law. Choosing an MC handle is kind of a weird thing because it’s like choosing an alter ego. I went through a lot of different ideas and then finally was like, “What am I really into right now?” And I really like George Orwell—he’s my favorite writer. A lot of what he did, sending political messages through allegory, is what I’m trying to do in my songwriting. I also thought there was something interesting about taking someone’s real name who had a pseudonym and using it as my pseudonym.
D: Thanks to Bon Iver’s success, the Twin Cities are waking up to the music scene in nearby Eau Claire, where Hyder Ali spent its formative years.
Robert Mulrennan: It was an amazing college experience and the Eau Claire scene is half the reason we’re still playing music. All of my biggest musical influences are from there: Amateur Love, all of Justin Vernon’s [of Bon Iver] music.
Kahlil Brewington: I can honestly say I’ve never seen people dig music more without knowing who the band is. People come out and they come out sick. They’re happy that you played. It’s just not something you see in bigger cities. People just love music there, it doesn’t matter what genre.
JH: For every Bon Iver, there’s a bunch of other great bands that haven’t blown up. Great bands would come through all the time. [Twin Cities rap/indie-rock combo] Mel Gibson And The Pants are also Eau Claire guys who we look up to a lot.
RM: The band really grew out of the friendship Joe and I had discovering music together in college. I never listened to any hip-hop before I met Joe.
D: Hyder Ali gigged solidly for nearly two years before releasing Careless Talk. How important was that seasoning period?
KB: We played together for about a year before we even went into the studio to try and do anything.
JH: We’re not a hip-hop band, we’re a band. We’re pretty anal about arrangements, figuring out how and where we want to do key changes. It took us a long time to figure out how to communicate with each other. Even then, our first recording attempt was disastrous. [Laughs.]
KB: Everybody thinks going into the studio is awesome—it sucks. Recording is not fun.
JH: Some of it’s fun a little.
KB: Yeah, I mean sitting around and smoking pot and drinking a bit, that’s fun as hell. [Laughs.] Oh come on, man, people know musicians do drugs. Doing the actual work over and over is not fun. But the end result is so worth it.
D: Because hip-hop is still a relatively new form of music compared to, say, rock, there are still a lot of preconceived notions about what rap is supposed to be in terms of sound and lyrical subject matter—and Hyder Ali doesn’t really conform to any of them. Is it ever frustrating not fitting in?
JH: There’s a stigma that whenever you do anything that’s out of the “fuck, bitch, ho, slut” realm you’re automatically a political/emo/conscious rapper. I’ve been called all of those things and don’t really consider myself any of them.
KB: Hip-hop’s in that transition period right now and it needs to progress. It has to progress. I mean if you listened to rock ’n’ roll in the ’50s it was something like Buddy Holly. If you listen to rock music now, only a tiny slice of it remotely sounds like Buddy Holly, and that’s basically rockabilly. Because rock music has grown so much beyond what it was, Holly’s sound is now just a subgenre. Hip-hop has been trying to go through this evolution for a while, but it’s taking some time. Hip-hop needs to change and it’s good that it’s changing. And we can be a part of that change.
Robert Mulrennan: It was an amazing college experience and the Eau Claire scene is half the reason we’re still playing music. All of my biggest musical influences are from there: Amateur Love, all of Justin Vernon’s [of Bon Iver] music.
Kahlil Brewington: I can honestly say I’ve never seen people dig music more without knowing who the band is. People come out and they come out sick. They’re happy that you played. It’s just not something you see in bigger cities. People just love music there, it doesn’t matter what genre.
JH: For every Bon Iver, there’s a bunch of other great bands that haven’t blown up. Great bands would come through all the time. [Twin Cities rap/indie-rock combo] Mel Gibson And The Pants are also Eau Claire guys who we look up to a lot.
RM: The band really grew out of the friendship Joe and I had discovering music together in college. I never listened to any hip-hop before I met Joe.
D: Hyder Ali gigged solidly for nearly two years before releasing Careless Talk. How important was that seasoning period?
KB: We played together for about a year before we even went into the studio to try and do anything.
JH: We’re not a hip-hop band, we’re a band. We’re pretty anal about arrangements, figuring out how and where we want to do key changes. It took us a long time to figure out how to communicate with each other. Even then, our first recording attempt was disastrous. [Laughs.]
KB: Everybody thinks going into the studio is awesome—it sucks. Recording is not fun.
JH: Some of it’s fun a little.
KB: Yeah, I mean sitting around and smoking pot and drinking a bit, that’s fun as hell. [Laughs.] Oh come on, man, people know musicians do drugs. Doing the actual work over and over is not fun. But the end result is so worth it.
D: Because hip-hop is still a relatively new form of music compared to, say, rock, there are still a lot of preconceived notions about what rap is supposed to be in terms of sound and lyrical subject matter—and Hyder Ali doesn’t really conform to any of them. Is it ever frustrating not fitting in?
JH: There’s a stigma that whenever you do anything that’s out of the “fuck, bitch, ho, slut” realm you’re automatically a political/emo/conscious rapper. I’ve been called all of those things and don’t really consider myself any of them.
KB: Hip-hop’s in that transition period right now and it needs to progress. It has to progress. I mean if you listened to rock ’n’ roll in the ’50s it was something like Buddy Holly. If you listen to rock music now, only a tiny slice of it remotely sounds like Buddy Holly, and that’s basically rockabilly. Because rock music has grown so much beyond what it was, Holly’s sound is now just a subgenre. Hip-hop has been trying to go through this evolution for a while, but it’s taking some time. Hip-hop needs to change and it’s good that it’s changing. And we can be a part of that change.
