HIDE are an electronic duo based in Chicago. The pair create dark and heavy sample-based compositions using a combination of self-sourced field recordings and various pop culture and media references. Their music is textured, minimal, and powerful, giving raw vulnerability an opportunity to unfurl. Their work is honest, confrontational, powerful and thought-provoking.
HIDE's third album, Interior Terror (2021), further abandons traditional concepts of song structure in favor of splintered rhythms and fevered, immediate release. Expanding on previous themes of autonomy and empowerment, Interior Terror addresses and questions the corporeal and immaterial body in a physical and metaphysical sense. Turning to the dread inside, reflecting on the world around us, HIDE gives voice to the power of destruction as a catalyst for hope, and to the collective experiences of those who've come before us as a wellspring of our own power. Raw vocal delivery of mantra-like prose issued forth yields a raging, plaintive wail that lulls, mocks, questions, proclaims and decries. A dearth of collected field recordings give way to more fluid arrangements while retaining a scathing urgency. The result is minimal, spacious, and jarring; a distant knocking grown into the pulse of a hypnotic dirge, drones emerge from shards of decomposed sound, bending, seething their way through your body.
Previous releases from HIDE include 2016's Black Flame EP which is dedicated to the memory of Reyhana Jabbari, a 27-year-old Iranian woman who was hung for allegedly killing someone who was trying to rape her, and deals with various human rights violations in Iran. HIDE's 2017 debut album for Dais, Castration Anxiety, addresses issues of power dynamics and representation, an album that calls for personal autonomy and the destruction of anything barring the way. A single on Sub-Pop for the label's singles club followed, with two unhinged tracks touching on the phenomenon of internalized misogyny, motherhood, and child abuse. In 2019, HIDE's second full-length album, Hell is Here, finds the artists trading more traditional compositions for a far more incongruous and disjointed approach. The tone is sick and heavy, and the listener is met with something less illusory and a lot more direct.
