By Chrissy Steinbock
They say if you’re not outraged you’re not paying attention — and if you’ve been wondering where the outrage is in the music of the past few years, then so have H. de Heutz.
If you haven’t met, H. de Heutz is a bass, drums, vocal and electronics duo based in Hull. On Oct. 1, they released their 12″ EP The Natural World on E-tron Records.
The title oozes irony. Seething with industrial sounds and machine-like rhythms, The Natural World is an unsettling musical reflection on a dystopian reality, touching on themes of mass surveillance and corporate technological oligopolies.
The grooves are strong but definitely not easy; they morph and shift into unexpected territory without warning. On one track the sound drops out entirely at one point, just to make sure you’re paying attention.
Credit: Patrick9000
The Natural World’s cover depicts a snapshot of a deserted urban street in the wake of the Fukushima nuclear disaster. The album’s main theme is “how corporate-controlled technology increasingly mediates our experience of ‘the natural world,’ and has an effect upon it,” H. de Heutz bassist Nathan Medema explained.
The Leveller got in touch with Medema to talk about making political music, where they got their name and the hidden underbelly of making records.
Medema explained that H. de Heutz started in 2011, inspired both by the political landscape under the Harper government and by the U.K. post-punk that came out in the early 1980s in response to Thatcher and Reagan. “I felt there were bands at that time [who were] responding very clearly and virulently to those ideas and those politics, and we were wondering where that response was under Harper.”
The band takes their name from a character in Prochain Épisode, a novel by Hubert Aquin, a Quebecois writer whose plot mirrors his experience writing a book while imprisoned for a revolutionary crime.
Like the pronunciation of H. de Heutz itself, Aquin leaves a lot open to interpretation. “The book made a really big impression on me,” Medema said. “The way it’s written is complex and very layered, and there’s some ambiguity around the identity of H. de Heutz and his relationships. There’s something potent in that ambiguity that’s challenging at the same time, and important to the band.”
Aquin’s intense style and political commitment was a key influence on the band.
Where a lot of politically-oriented bands can be over-the-top explicit, H. de Heutz jars you without telling you what to do with that uneasiness.
“There are political bands who love to tell you very explicitly what they’re protesting and what should be done and I think there’s value in that,” explained Medema. “At the same time, I sometimes wonder if that establishes a hierarchical, authoritarian relationship with the listener that closes down space to think.”
“Maybe a more respectful relationship with the listener can be had if we can be clear, but also imply, and leave space for reflection.” Instead of telling the listener what to think, this more suggestive approach to political messaging shakes listeners out of passive modes of consumption.
Asked about their inspirations Medema said, “If anything it’s just news, developments in the world today. That’s the biggest inspiration for what we’re doing. Our political context is also an emotional one, and carries a human cost, and I think it’s important that both of those things are expressed in what we’re doing.”
This article first appeared in the Leveller Vol. 10, No. 3 (Nov/Dec 2017).
