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Hiem

We've taken up a tip off from Sheffield's finest The Long Blondes and caught up with the (increasingly hard to pigeon hole) musicians and DJ extraordinaires, Hiem.

Posted 2nd March 2006, 7:56pm in Interviews, by Nick Guy
Hiem Sheffield is buzzing at the moment, producing bands and firing them out at an incredible rate so we've taken up a tip off from Sheffield's finest The Long Blondes and caught up with the (increasingly hard to pigeon hole) musicians and DJ extraordinaires, Hiem.

Ok so your name might be easy to Google but what does it mean? "We once stayed in a hotel in Germany called HIEM, it had stunning views across the countryside which was very beautiful, we have got no idea what it means so if anybody does know out there please enlighten us" So just who are Hiem? "Hiem consist of two musical adventurers from the seven hill of madness in the heart of Northern England namely Nicco and Bozz, plus additional warriors when we play live". There just aren't enough duos anymore.

How did Hiem come about? "We met backstage at the Reading festival when we both played with different bands: Bozz with the All Seeing I and Nicco with Venini, we didn't get off to the best of starts as I (Nicco) was tucking into Bozz's rider, and one word of warning, don't touch Bozz's rider cos he becomes a very angry individual which resulted in Nicco being thrown across the room in a WWF Stylee, after that we just hit it off and thought we would give it a go working on a project." That's how all the best relationships start - violent encounters in backstage areas over a plate of sandwiches. What were your backgrounds before that fateful day? "Nicco started promoting club/ band nights when he was about 12 years old and played in loads of indie / 60s garage outfits in and around the North of England, while Bozz has been putting Techno House Rave records out since the early 90's, he then moved to Sheffield where he met Parrott and the rest of the All Seeing I guys."

So the varied credentials are certainly in place to produce a wealth of potential shifting genre releases but where would you point the influences of Hiem as coming from? "Where don't they come from… We take influence from living and breathing in an industrial city. The rest comes from guys and gals we see and hear around our city, and our massive record collections ranging from Acid House to Pulp, Techno to David Bowie. We are really into what's going on now as well including bands like Bloc Party who we played with last year, The Killers, Anne Shenton and the whole micro club scene."

Sheffield seems to be thriving at the moment - The Long Blondes named a few acts including yourselves as ones to watch out for but who would you recommend? "Pink Grease have a studio next door to ours and they seem to be doing the biz, we have just finished off a bottle of vodka they have brought back from a tour in Russia . There's The Long Blondes, Arctic Monkeys… there's a new band every week which has something to say and it's all good" Is there a feeling of helping each other out within the music community of Sheffield? "Not sure really, we have never met the majority of them but I am sure if the Arctic Monkeys want to borrow a jack to jack lead then we would lend them one, but to be honest we don't really venture out of our studio unless we are rinsing the decks or playing live."

They've shut the Pop Museum down in Sheffield now haven't they? We never made it unfortunately – did you? What was it like? "It was like War of the Worlds had landed in Sheffield. If you have never seen it it's a crazy but cool looking building. As for a pop museum it seems to be like most things in Sheffield that are given grants just seem to be aimed at certain people in the more affluent areas, we never really got the chance to go before it had shut down. We supported the cause to turn them into massive fish tanks with sharks and goldfish." Where would you have fitted in to it? "Next to Kraftwerk and Roxy Music we think, but we heard it was full of things like Tony Christie's best friend's 3 piece suite." That sounds bloody good to us. "It was typical Sheffield; off the mark in a really odd way that was endearing."


After the release of 'Chelsea' everyone was lauding you as "the Sheffield Streets" -how did you feel about that? "We didn't mind being compared to Mike Skinner on that particular song as it was very Streets-y in a northern way, and we knew that the comparisons would stop as soon as people saw our explosive live set or heard the following releases. For example 'She's The One' did very well on Crosstown Rebels and helped generate a new fan base along with the one we had got from the release of 'Chelsea'. Comparison will always continue when 'She's The One' was released people were still saying it sounded like The Streets mixed with Giorgio Morrodo. We seem to have a crossover effect with a lot of indie kids digging us along with the Tech house people." That's certainly true with the new single 'Friendz' and 'Radio Radio' which is more electro fuelled, more like Audio Bullys if anything. "When the album comes out people will realise that we have got a lot of different aspects to the Hiem sound. We just want to write songs instead of producing dance floor fodder like the Audio Bullies. We guess a lot of people missed the release of 'She's The One' when it was released because a lot of the press was aimed around the dance community. Hopefully with the release of 'Friendz' people will get more of a grasp of the Hiem sound. Nicco is working on another monologue for the album so The Streets things will still continue to an extent. But for the time being we are happy not having a tag."

Sounds like there is a lot we've still to see so where can we expect the future to take the Hiem sound? 'We may surprise a few people by having a few slower songs on the album, we have got a track which is very David Bowie-esque called 'Zombie Party' which Damien Lazurus at Crosstown Rebels is going bonkers about at the moment. Its brought a more acoustic sound but still remains very electro and close to our roots."

Picturesque views, grappling encounters, Russian vodka. That'll be Hiem for you.

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