The word Dusk refers to the period of partial darkness between day and night. It’s a fitting title for this album, which isn’t entirely dark, but it is darker than we normally like to sound. The vocals are rough and imperfect; the synth sounds and samples are dirty and noisy. Despite that, it was an important milestone for us.
Lyrically, it tells the story of someone finding their way through their early twenties. They’re trying to find their place in a tough urban environment. The love songs are bitter and naïve; the political commentaries are scornful.
As with the preceding album Empires, we combined sounds from every electronic source we could lay our hands on - old analogue synths, software synths, samples of vintage drum machines, and our trusty old Yamaha keyboard. These were mixed down through four channels and then painstakingly combined with the vocals using an audio editor.
We started work on Dusk in 2003 in Birmingham, and the writing process took us from Derbyshire to snowy Berlin and finally Leeds before it was finally released at the end of 2006. We didn’t have much experience with promoting ourselves online, so our main weapon of choice was MySpace, although our arrival seemed to coincide with its decline.
Despite the technological handicaps it suffered from during recording, Dusk was surprisingly successful - some of the singles remain among our most widely listened. The growing community even led to our inclusion on a compilation album.
The first single Consequences gave us one of our most successful commercial outings to date, particularly when it took pride of place as the lead track on our first full iTunes release, the iDusk EP.
So Dusk may not be the most cheerful of albums, but it does have a lot of history for us.
Hypernova are a synthpop duo from the UK, and here are some things which they have said:
