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HANZ announces first of 2 EPs
Today Tri Angle Records announce the long-awaited new release from North Carolina producer, Hanz. ‘Plasty I’ is the first of two EPs and will be released on January 26th.
Hanz, otherwise known as North Carolina based producer Brandon Juhans, originally wanted to be an illustrator but fell upon music. Curious about how albums he liked were made, he found himself researching a multitude of wide-ranging genres and techniques. He wanted to make things that he would want to hear himself and was eventually able to make music that matched his illustration style, setting up entire scenes with sound. Taking on an unusually divergent range of musical influences, he brings together hip-hop, punk and experimental music with his own thread – a unique sound that is never just one thing.
Listen to the EP’s closing track, “Page”:
The key influences for Hanz’s forthcoming long-overdue EP lie outside music – it is heavily influenced by film. Things like pacing, tension, comic relief and climactic moments are palpable throughout the EP, and through its follow-up, which is due to land later in 2018. ‘Plasty I’ is the first of two recordings that form a kind of mirror shot of each other.
Both EPs developed in sessions that started right before the re-issue of Hanz’s LP ‘Reducer’ on Tri Angle in 2015. Over a year or so of working, he decided to trim compositions down and get to the point in less than twenty minutes per EP. He named this work “Plasty” due to its constant structural changes, it’s as if the sound is being operated on surgically.
Hanz’s music contains tension and action. He edits his music like a movie, placing pieces of a song inside other songs: certain parts and melodies from part one reappear in part two and vice versa. That’s his way of making these EPs compliment each other, by making them function like puzzles where cinematic influences are joined by inspirations from the Surrealists and the cut-up techniques of William Burroughs & Brion Gysin. ‘Plasty’ is the sound of an artist in flux, evolving and emerging through exploration.