Chatting to UK producer Ryan Hunn it’s hard to believe his first releases as Illum Sphere only came out last year. Hunn has achieved a lot in that time – 2009 saw two EPs and a 7″ on Manchester label Fat City, and 2010 kicked off with a release on the respected label 3024. In May he followed that up with a 12″ of his own work, also on 3024, Titan.
Hunn’s work as Illum Sphere draws on the ghost of J Dilla, a musical hero to so many people, and his strain of hip hop beats, but he injects a uniquely British bassline and rave aesthetic to make it his own. Titan saw him adopting more dance floor flavours than his previous releases and, appropriately for the sound palette of 3024, filtering aspects of techno into the mix. But it retains that wonderful, muted bass thump and lazy drum hits that have marked his other productions.
When Red Bull Music Academy came to London earlier this year Hunn’s involvement lead to a fruitful relationship. The Academy is supporting his first tour ofAustralia this month, along with fellow producers Martyn and Tokimonsta, and he couldn’t be more excited.
I reach Hunn whilst he is packing to go and play at a festival in Croatia. “This month is pretty mental,” he tells me. “From now, I think I’m actually at home for two days until the end of September or something. I get back from Croatia on Monday night, then I go to Canada on Wednesday morning and a few days after I get back from there I leave for Australia!”
It’s a hectic schedule but Hunn is no stranger to hard work. At home, in Manchester, he runs the successful club night Hoya:Hoya. That night was originally a monthly gig but it has recently moved to every fortnight which is a testament to its success.
Hoya:Hoya started in Feb 2008 after Hunn met Jonny Dub, a local DJ who was running an art night called Sketch City in Manchester – a movement with a chapter in Melbourne in fact. Sketch City featured a unique mix of art and music and it was visionary in its spirit.
Hunn and Dub kicked off Hoya:Hoya at The Music Box, a large venue in Manchester, on the same night as a recently retired and long running event called Electric Chair. It was a high profile slot but unfortunately the venue was too big for what they wanted to do. After four shows there they moved to The Roadhouse, a venue with more limited capacity but a more appropriate vibe for the night.
“When we initially started Hoya it was mainly me booking stuff,” explains Hunn, “but as we’ve really focused on running it together we’ve started thinking of things we could do. Like setting up a label was always a plan, doing a U Stream was always a plan, pushing the visual element was always a plan, and now we’re going fortnightly which was always a plan. And then in January we’re looking at ditching the names of the guests on the flyers so every guest is going to be unannounced. Maybe just spread it through word of mouth because we want to push the night as an entity.”
“The people who attend are just as important as the people who play – we want people to come and trust our vibe,” he concludes.
“We’re not getting a superiority complex. At the end of the day we’re just a club night and there are loads of them. And we’re stupid enough to put on the people we want to see!” he laughs. “But if people like it – which it looks like they are doing – then that’s really cool.”
“The Roadhouse is one of the only venues in Manchester that are actually keen to build relationships with new nights and support them. They understand that the early days of running nights are really hard – especially if you are doing a niche, underground thing. Which it was two years ago when we were putting on Gaslamp Killer and Samiyam, and no one had really heard of them.”
“We’re quite lucky that those artists who have now got bigger will come back and play for mates rates!” he laughs. “It has also helped with my production and the contacts I make through that. We’re lucky, though, that people enjoy it and there’s a crew that like to come out. But it’s not paying a mortgage – we just don’t have the capacity and we don’t want to charge too much, you know. It’s all part of building something that people can feel a part of.”
But the night has a unique vibe and a good following: “At Hoya the people who get the worst reaction are people who play one genre for an hour. The crowd likes to hear a wide range of stuff.”
“Not to big it up too much but some people will not like it at all because that’s just natural. Because it’s so visual based, and the visuals add another element to it. It’s all sensory in my opinion – not to get too deep,” he laughs
“I mean the music can only trigger certain senses. Then you have visuals that can stimulate a sense. But then you have a club full of sweaty people and it doesn’t smell so good. So, not to get too hippy, but we started burning incense behind the decks so it would filter down into the club. It’s all just sensory.”
The Hoya crew recently did their first streaming video event online via U Stream. “With all the residents now we all have a similar passion for trying to do shit that hasn’t been done before,” says Hunn. “The response was much better than we anticipated. I think next time we’re going to nudge it a bit more and take it to the next level; more projectors, more stuff to project on, multiple cameras, some live video editing.”
“Jonny just reminded me actually – he’s in the room – that the initial plan was we were going to Ustream live from Hoya back in May when I did my first AV thing. So have the Ustream running all night from Hoya. It’s something that we’re looking into doing.”
And there is a record label in the works: “We’re setting up a label which is just going to release music by people who have played at Hoya. We just sent off our first release to be mastered today. So we’re hoping that will kind of like generate a bit more interest worldwide and we’ll get to the point where we can UStream all the Hoyas live so people who aren’t in Manchester can see them.”
“I think Jonny and my paths have varied more in the last year since my production started to kick off. But I think whatever we do now – and the reason we got the new residents on board is because they share the same ethos. Whatever we all do we will talk about Hoya. What we’re all doing individually helps us collectively.”
Hunn tells me the sudden impact of his music productions has been backed by years of work. “I didn’t use Illum Sphere as an alias until I started production,” he explains. “So I hadn’t done anything under that name before. My first gig as Illum Sphere was abroad actually! Me and Jonny went to LA and San Francisco and so my first gig was at Dam Funk’s night, and the second one was at Low End. So I hadn’t even put a record out.”
“I didn’t really build anything before that – there was a lot of stuff in my own name because we did stuff in Manchester for a while but nothing under Illum Sphere. So it’s taken a bit of a while I think for people to become familiar with the alias or whatever.”
In May this year Hunn premiered a new audio-visual show with Hoya visuals man EMN. “It’s still fairly new. I’m using an APC40 and Ableton, but trying to make it as live as possible. I’m breaking stuff apart as much as I possibly can whilst making it still sound cohesive.”
“EMN and I sync computers – he’s off to the side of the stage – he has his set up which tends to be three or four projectors, projecting from behind me. And I control a projector from my computer for one-shot stuff that he can’t see. Then I control the BPM of his visual program from my Ableton and we link via an ethernet cable.”
“So it’s all a bit more unique than just some dude with a laptop playing Ableton.”
“So that’s the full live show, which is obviously not going to be able to be toured right now. Hopefully one day I will be in a position where people will pay a bit extra to see the full live show. It’s a shame really because the reason that I actually started played live when I did – I didn’t feel particularly ready for it – was that EMN had been pushing me to do a live set for ages. He wanted to do this real AV thing together.”
“When I started to play live I really wanted it to be as live as possible, without playing everything from scratch. It’s little things like turning off the quantised triggering so if I come in out of time I have to wrestle with it. The same way a band does if someone is out of time and they’ve gotta get into time.”
“It’s predominantly my productions but there’s around fifteen percent of the set other people’s tracks. They are parts that I found interesting to do live stuff with. Like Martyn gave me the parts to Broken so I layer that over other things. But it is predominantly my own productions.”
Hunn has a number of releases coming up later this year and into the start of next year. There is a 12” on Tectonic, the first Hoya 12” (with Hoya residents Lone and Krystal Klear), a remix of Zed Bias’ new single, and a new EP on Fat City.
“I took most of August off to do music,” he tells me, “because I was really starting to think about it. And I think when you start to think about it like, ‘I should be doing something’, then you don’t tend to write that well. So I just stopped taking gigs for August and did a load of stuff.”
“The original plan was to do the Fat City EPs close together but the way things panned out I was interrupted by gigs and other things. They will be still fairly close but when I do my first full album I want it to be very much be a piece and not be made or released six or seven months apart.”
But the plan is still on track: “Now I have these releases done they’ll gradually come out over the next few months and whilst they’re coming out I’ll be working on a full album. It may come out on Hoya but I am also talking to a few people from other labels. That will hopefully be ready in February next year.”
It is clear that Hunn is the sort of person who looks at the world and sees what he wants to create. With Hoya:Hoya and his own music as two sides of that vision he is well on his way.
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