Hyd and umru

Join us in the Pioneer Works Main Hall for Hyd and umru this November 15.

“All it takes is a flame.” Hyd aka Hayden Dunham unveils their debut LP CLEARING, an album of dynamic, seductive and texturally-rich pop songs that signals a new dialogue of destruction and renewal.

CLEARING captures the confluence of agency and surrender. Arranged cyclically over 11 tracks (released on 11/11), Hyd carries us through their elemental states of being: Fire (destruction), Ash (rebuilding), Garden (germination) and Air (emergence). In harnessing elements sonically, visually and conceptually, Hyd builds out a sensory world for their audience to hear, see, feel and breathe in. The album begins with chaos, worlds burning to ash and starting anew. New forms through singles “So Clear” and “Afar” mutate and emerge like seeds breaking through a surface of packed soil.

Euphoric and kaleidoscopic songs like “Breaking Ground” and “Fallen Angel” speak of energy building from one medium of destruction to new mediums of life; lighter fluid to flame, damage to vulnerability, stillness to smoke, and an eventual return to air.

Hyd’s unique approach to songwriting results in material that is emotionally rich in texture, while their acute ability to control the temperature of a song makes the music multidimensional. Hyd has also built and led a community of aurally aligned creative partners, whose presence is felt throughout CLEARING. Drawing in such friends and artists as SOPHIE and A. G. Cook (Hyd’s co-creators of trans-dimensional project QT), as well as Caroline Polachek, Nomak, Danny L Harle, Jonsi and EASYFUN, they created CLEARING between Los Angeles, London, New York and a series of volcanic islands. Informed by Hyd’s wider artistic practice, Hyd’s music is the result of interior research, community dialogues, and material exploration designed to create an immense new ecosystem for their dedicated audience to be immersed in.

CLEARING follows Hyd’s self-titled debut EP, released in 2021 to critical acclaim, and a host of global live shows. Throughout the album, Hyd explores untouched levels of vulnerability—dismantling interior structures and letting the frame fracture to spur a cyclical, sonic, visual and sensory evolution. As materials molt into new states of being, so does Hyd.

Hyd’s music breaks free of ruptured systems and expands beyond what is physically present or possible, and in doing so, invites the listener to join them on a journey of inward investigation and a reckoning of their own. For this, Hyd is a catalyst, and CLEARING is the strike of the match that beckons the flame.

“Music from the future, held in the past, released into the present.”

Estonian-American search-engine-optimized producer umru has quickly come to the forefront of the experimental pop zeitgeist following his first credit on Charli XCX’s landmark mixtape Pop 2. Merging intense, bass-heavy sound design with earworm vocals from the likes of 100 gecs, Tommy Cash, Rebecca Black, or ericdoa, his work continues to define and support the cutting edge of pop music.