Hypnotech 3 delivers what they call "melodic, ambient pulsebeat," which I could better describe as music that could have been culled from the Nintendo days, brought back with a dance edge....

Kanadensiska Hypnotech 3 serverar ett snyggt instrumentalspår som förmedlar samma nervösa känsla som återfinns på många gamla klassiska Tangerine Dream-plattor.

Hypnotech 3's second official full-length, Prescription Electronics, cements the group's position as prime purveyors of retro/future mood music. Band members John Merrall and Mike Pawluk continue to make music that expresses their innermost tangerine dreams, with arrangements that prove less is more. As with their previous release, H3's songs seem to be frameworks for atmosphere; there is movement, but it is the movement of planets revolving, dead stars pulsing and comets swishing past in slow motion. The album evokes the eerie silence out outer space though its otherworldly tones and mesmerizing soundscapes. Of course, that could summarize the group's previous effort, too, so it should be made clear that there is also growth here.

Prescription Electronics has more variance in sound (and even track length), more attention to percussion, and some different approaches (like a familiar CBC announcer's appearance on "For David Wisdom at 3 am"). Overall, Prescription Electronics is more upbeat than Hypnotech's debut, but it isn't as if they're gunning to fill the dance floor. While you could use the term "trance" to describe the listener's response, you can't use it to describe the music.

In Tune with the True Distortion (cd, 5tx, 63'48'' - Autoprod. 'o2)

Ambient, Ill-bient, very very well live-recorded (if i didn't read it on the notes, i never said), sounds coming from the infinitive space, alien manoeuvre, - that is, Alien Space Manoeuvre, - opening track for this cd, about 16 minutes track: did You ever see that kind of out of focus visual effects, town lights becoming long trail of light in movement?, - alright, - because that is the most faithful music arrangement of that, - and John Merrall (ex Heaven Piano & Co, canadian 9o's Band lost in a beautiful shoegaze) knows too, together with Michael J. Pawluk.

A cover picture where three lampposts deform/change in mouths. - A cd to be heard in horizontal position, - perfect sound-track for space odyssey, - listen to Stella Maris Space Station, or else the ultra-low frequencies in Nine Seconds Of Light (notwithstanding its title, be ready for 12 minutes of sound). Disquieting, dark, light years sleeps, a cold sleep under hibernation. Cd closes with a last instrumental track, different from the rest because of its 'real' line-up, featuring drums, distorted bass guitar, layered guitar, (brief Heaven Piano Co memory) driving into melancholic loneliness.

Space yawns -- ice, dust and vapour. Rogue satellites roll through orbit, while far beneath them, under a granite mountain, dreaming computers blink lidlessly and wind themselves in sheets of code — and that’s just one of the five epic tracks on In Tune With The True Distortion, the debut full-length from mesmeric local space–rockers (and dutiful contrarians) Hypnotech 3. The duo — John Merrall (Heaven Piano Co., Your Waking Dream) and Michael Jackson Pawluk (The Dunderheads, Rats Eat Children) emerged only recently, but sounds eternal — sonics that suggest narcotic cosmos, to start with. They projected their thoughts to us electronically earlier this week.

V: "You’ve been working in atmospherics and noise for a while now. What’s the appeal in that sound or genre?"

JM: "It’s just what me and Mike are able to do best together. Hypnotech 3 has always been about trying to find a common ground between our interests. Actually, when we started, we had a drummer who was very much into stuff like dark ambient, goth, that sort of thing. I was into bliss-out and the Beautiful Noise scene, and Mike came from punk and experimental noise. Part of the reason Mike and I ended up going alone was that it made it a lot easier to find common ground with only two people. So really, the whole point of Hypnotech 3 is that it’s the entire sum of the common ground that me and Mike have. I wouldn’t call our stuff Noise as much as Beautiful Noise, like a sort of meeting between the stuff Scott Cortez or Windy & Carl does and the stuff coming out of the Bristol space-rock scene (Flying Saucer Attack, Amp, EAR etc.). The point isn’t to assault people like Merzbow; we’re more into seemingly-benevolent hypnotism. And really, the appeal for us is that it is quite trippy."

MP: "It sounds corny but I see the whole as just music. I really can only do it one way, whether it comes out as a punk rock song, a noisejam, ambient soundscapes, whatever. With Hypnotech 3 I really enjoy the freedom of not having to sound like anything, so I can concentrate on ideas like using sound to tear a sonic hole in the current dimensional fabric in order to create a portal to another dimension of sound. Either way, it’s a lot of fun."

V: "Do you feel that traditional “rock” training limits you or liberates you in H3 work?"

JM: "I know I can speak for both me and Mike when I say that we wouldn’t be able to do Hypnotech 3 if we weren’t both thoroughly disillusioned with and tired of “rock”."

MP: "A fair deal of the techniques we use to create our music have been picked up along the way, and I daresay we still have to hold rehearsals and deal with broken patch cords, blown amps, and all that rock’n’roll junk. The cool thing is though with Hypnotech 3, any and all ideas have the possibility of coming in to being, and the form lends itself to evolution."

V: "Even though you’re obviously able to record and release material with greater frequency than, say, the average label-bound artist, are you reluctant to “flood the market”?"

JM: "No. Rather, we want to. Twenty years from now, we want to be like Current93 or Legendary Pink Dots, having about 40 records that we’ve put out, that are all impossible to find. As long as it’s all good, that is."

V: "At times, your music is seemingly boundless. How do you know how (or if) to shape it, and how do know when to stop? Is disc space really the only functional boundary, or are mammoth digital downloads in your future?"

JM: "To tell you the truth, some of our music is very rigidly composed, like “Alien Space Manoeuvre” or “The Planets They Are Sleeping Now”. But when we’re composing on the fly, we really just let something start, then follow it along the path and see where it goes. For every song like “Nine Seconds of Light,” there’s half a dozen that never make it to CD. As far as those songs go, we don’t bother shaping them — what we played is what you hear. One take, that’s it, let’s move on. We’re still working on improving our improv ability, because we really would like to be like Tangerine Dream and do two hours of brand-new fully-improvised music at every single concert. You can get nine hours of music on one audio DVD — that makes us happy, knowing that technology will be opening up some new possibilities for us in the near future."

V: "This is good music to get lost in. Do you worry about losing yourself in it in concert, to the exclusion of the audience?"

JM: "I completely zone out during a show. Doesn’t matter though, as we’re not there to perform in the traditional sense — I mean, we’re not there to pose and jump around. We are still trying to provide a shared headspace for the audience, it’s just that we’re a lot more passive about it. Maybe it’s just because we have more work to do on stage than the typical bar band."

MP: "Johnny gets catatonic, like around sound check. I get all “locked in,” which is hilarious because it’s not quite a role-reversal, but it’s kind of interesting. I do then try when I am playing to get to “that place,” because I mean, me and Johnny are the pilots and we have to get you “there” too. I don’t want anyone to feel excluded though. People are welcome to join us here, there’s enough space for everyone."

V: "You've expressed the idea in the past that music isn't as good or potent as it used to be -- specifically the early to mid '70s, to generalize. Why make music now, given that "it's all been done"?"

JM: "It hasn't all been done. I like to think of music as an exploration in some sort of theoretical space. Every once in a while, some band comes along and opens up a new space for exploration — like when Seefeel invented dub-shoegaze, or Portishead invented musique-noire, or Louis Armstrong invented swing in jazz. At that point, a new space has been opened up for exploration, and other artists come along to explore the limits of that space, find common areas with other musical spaces, that sort of thing.
"I think that's the whole point in music — to explore the whole range of human musical thought. The point of Hypnotech 3 is, we see whole areas that were opened up from the ’60s to the ’90s — Philip Glass, Tangerine Dream, Bristol space-rock, minimalism, even peripheral ideas that never made it in chill-out — and we really think there was still lots of room for exploration in those areas. Neither of us is a world-shaking innovator like Kevin Shields, so I can't see us creating a whole new genre, but we can definitely explore the dark areas in the genres that have been forgotten.
"I don't think music is as potent as it used to be, though, which is kinda silly when you think about it because we've increased the potency of pot 20 times, why not the music too? But I think the problem with most music is, it's never an attempt to do something original and explore any sort of space; it ends up being an attempt to score chicks and show your friends how cool you are.
"There's nothing wrong with that in itself, but the problem is that the corporations figured out completely, ten years ago with Nirvana, how to take that popularity contest and commodify it — to the point where nobody can name a band that's in it for the art anymore, it's all assumed to be pop."

V: "If your music was a philosophical tenet, what would it be?"

JM: "“When you look long into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you.” - Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, 146."

Merrall has shoes (i.e "shoegazer") in his musical closet via his work with Heaven Piano Company, and Your Waking Dream (with Christina Sealey of Orphx/Antiform) in the early '90s. At the same time, Pawluk was working with such Vancouver punk combos as the Dunderheads and noise outfits as Rats Eat Children (excellent name!). Neither of those past CV experiences, however, could have prepared you for In Tune With The True Distortion, the duo's debut release under the Hypnotech 3 banner. ITWTTD sounds like The BBC Radiophonic Workshop adapting vintage Tangerine Dream licks for the as-yet unmade Dr. Who: The Movie. The album pulsates, rather than grooves, with swirls of celestial synth-generated and 'treated' guitar sounds, and has fared well on US campus radio, with air-play at Chicago, Cleveland, and Atlanta stations.

Of the two downloadable releases, On Ambient Senses continues the duo's ethereal bent, while Cyborgs Revisited (recorded this past summer at the top of the Jackson Square Shopping Center in downtown Hamilton) has got considerably more motion in its lotion. A second studio CD release is apparently in the works.

Lots of pads, synths, melodies and some nice piano's... And this for some sixteen minutes long... Wouldn't it just be too long? Let's find out ;)

I have to say it's extremely relaxing. You can almost hear the angels sing along to the nice melodies and fall asleep with it - figure of speech ;)

Although it's a pretty long track (16:54 to be exact), you'll not be aware while it progresses. It's a joy to hear and a refreshing take on chill out music. It's not always the same chords playing; every now and then it takes a different turn, but stays just as smooth.

Sometimes there is a small bassy riff that pops up and builds along the melodies, but this doesn't disturb the atmosphere created by the track... not at all.

The somewhat beepy sounds reminded me of a track by PPK called 'Resurrection' that's very famous over here.

The pianos are pretty nice and not too loudly recorded to take the song up to an even more dreamy state of mind - truly nice. I've never paid to much attention to chillout tracks, but thanks to this one I know I have to do more... And maybe make some of my own ;)

I'm really glad to have heard this one... I think I'm gonna keep it for further listening. As for everyone else, if you're feeling a bit down or stressed and you're in the urgent need of some rest, tune into this one and place yourself on your bed... And close your eyes to dream away :)

I am more than just a music fan. I am a "collector" -- at least, that is what i tell myself in order to justify my CD purhcasing "habit".

A few weeks ago i found a person online who was getting rid of a copy of High Ball Me by Moose. Moose opened for Cocteau Twins in 1994, and i have been searching for their exceedingly rare catalog after seeing them on that tour.

When the package arrived there were 2 CD's. This was the other. I wrote the individual in question to see if this was sent by mistake.

"No," came the reply. "That's me and my friend." Which, i have to admit, could be scary. What type of music could this individual perform? Dreading some sort of Dave Matthews-esque jam band, i plugged it in.

And immediately thought, what was i worried about? The return address plainly indicated suburban Toronto, home of the contemporary space rock zeitgeist. This band exist alongside Datura Dream Deferred, SIANspheric, Mean Red Spiders, South Pacific, etc.

Well, actually they are a little more electronic than those guitar bands. Maybe that makes it "space electronica"? "Space IDM"? (No, it's not glitchy.) What this reminds me of is the stuff i got into electronica for in the first place -- early Orb, Spacetime Continuum, the Excursions in Ambience series on Astralwerks.... This is really cool ambient dubby deep listening music.

It is also self-released. You can order a copy from the band by contacting them at their MP3.com site. If you like music of the type i just mentioned, then this is totally worth checking out.

HYPNOTECH 3 In Tune With The True Distortion INDEPENDENT/CLAIRECORDS

By James Hayashi-Tennant

Hamilton has its share of basement-dwelling musical otaku; artists who hide behind Macintosh screens and tweak their electronica into perfection, only to let the material languish on their hard drives. John Merrall and Michael Jackson Pawluk — a.k.a. Hypnotech 3 - would rather share their futuristic vision. H3’s debut, In Tune With The True Distortion, is a vision indeed, at least in local indie rock terms: 5 ambient tracks, averaging well over 10 minutes in length. Hypnotech music is based on atmosphere more than melody; the mood of each track built gradually through frequency and tone, repetition and drone. If 16 minute tracks could get airplay, "Alien Space Manoeuvre" would be the single - its washes of sound, stretched beneath steady but subtle rhythms and repeated tonal refrains, give the song, and indeed the entire album, the feeling of drifting through deep space (it is also, as was discovered through personal experience, a spectacular and eerie soundtrack for driving through downtown Hamilton streets in the dead still darkness of 5 a.m. in February). Each song establishes its own feeling; while each tracks succeeds in that respect, "Alien," "The Planets They Are Sleeping Now" and the final cut — the only one to feature traditional rock instruments — are the most interesting. The mostly-uncharted territory of modern electronic music overflows with experimentation, so it’s difficult to say how ground-breaking H3 might be — but locally, they’re like nobody else. At least nobody who ever leaves the house.