Bloodhype's latest release Ether arP, brings together Maureen Neer, who is the primary visionary, and constant collaborator Chris Lee. The electronic, house based, duo is making a name for themselves in the city which birthed house music. With no time like the present, Bloodhype released Ether arP just four months after Letters With Friends, and it could not have come at a better time. We are thankful to Maureen and Chris for taking the time to do an interview with us and know that you will appreciate the music of Bloodhype. 

-Mark Morrissey

MN: Maureen Neer
CL: Chris Lee

How do you keep people from mistaking your music which is described as electronic and house music from pop EDM?

MN: Maybe we are pop EDM? I don’t know. Trying to describe your own music is like listening to your voice on the answering machine. It just feels stupid. Also, I write songs in different genres all the time. Sometimes I write a country song, or a more classical piano piece. I don't really know if I have a set genre. When Chris and I are working together, both live and now more collaboratively in the writing process than before, we have a setup that limits us to a certain style of music: namely electronic, pop, and house.  

CL: I don't do anything actively to prevent that mistake. If people make it, hopefully they end up liking our music anyway. But yeah with all the different genres of electronic music out there, it's a minefield trying to describe yourself. Are you downtempo? Lo-fi? Indie electronica? If you have one song at 135BPM and another song at 70BPM how do you try to summarize your sound when there seems to be a different genre for every tempo? So we just go with the broadest description possible, which is electronic, otherwise we just make up our own, hoping it’s evocative enough, like "jungle cat witch beats".

Can you walk us through the creative process that goes into making electronic music and especially your song “I’m a human”?

MN: Chris and I write both separately and together. Bloodhype started as my solo project back in Athens, OH, and Chris mastered my first album through a fucked up reel-to-reel which made it sound super awesome and warbly. We've been working together ever since in one capacity or another. Ether arP is great because it's the first time the two of us have really spent a lot of time honing the songs together, even if we write them separately at the start. I guess we wrote a lot together in Soddy Daisy (a rock'n'roll band we were in together when we first moved here), but Bloodhype was always my thing. Now it's our thing. 

CL: There are three methods we use to write. The first is where Maureen basically writes a song herself and I just bring a few elements to add into it. The second is where I have a fully programmed drum part and some synths that Maureen adds some flavor to. And the third is where we just kind of start out with a simple loop or beat and build on it together. 
”I'm a human” was one of those. I had a basic 3/4 groove that I'd programmed a long time ago and kept stored on the Electribe and then one day Maureen just decided to goof around with her vocal effects pedal and sound like a robot as well as finding sounds on her Deep Mind, so I just pulled up that old beat I had and we started messing around with it. 
I had cut up that Alex Jones monologue a while ago and sent it to Maureen thinking it would make for some fun samples for her 404, and we'd actually featured them in a more dancey song we played live. But when she played them over the song we were writing, they suddenly sounded less goofy and more like some profound statement of the human condition or something. It ended up walking that line of parody and sincerity that we often like to sit on, so we kept it as part of the song.

The first two songs have lyrics, how did you decide which songs would get lyrics?

CL: That's mostly if Maureen feels a place for it. When we jam on a song sometimes she just comes up with melodies and sings em (“Latex Trench”), and sometimes she explicitly writes a song and puts lyrics to it before it’s ever brought to me (“Ways To Go Shopping”). And sometimes I have a whole idea for a song and it just doesn't seem like something where lyrics would fit (“The Meadow”).

MN: Lyrics take up a lot of space in a song. Sometimes when we're making something it just doesn't feel necessary to further clutter up a piece with words. Plenty of great music doesn't need lyrics to paint the picture or set the mood. 

Where does the name “Bloodhype” come from?

CL: If I remember right it's the name of a disease in a science fiction book from the 70s.

MN: Ding ding ding! Chris is correct. And fun fact: a German band tried to pay me 500 euros to change the name so they could have it. I declined. So now there are two Bloodhypes!.

This question is directed to Chris, How is instagram doing more damage to your brain. Referring to the article linked in your instagram page?

CL: I use Facebook to organize shows, share my idiot thoughts, and find out about events in Chicago, but when I think about using social media beyond that it makes me uncomfortable. I read about people going on certain diets because of influencers, painting their walls certain colors because of Instagram, basing their vacations on Instagram, going to certain restaurants just to photograph the food there for Instagram, paying to get into places where the main appeal is taking pictures of yourself there for Instagram. And then you have people comparing themselves relentlessly to celebrities and stuff on it. It just doesn't seem like it has a lot of benefits. You can't post links on it, you have to work to have substantial conversations with it. It seems mostly to appeal to the worst most vain parts of us. In 2008, I spent a good five years away from all social media and found out how few friends I really have but it was nice to reconnect with myself and focus on tangible things. Ever since I've gone back I find myself counting likes and being drawn into the weird urge to basically brag about my life to a bunch of acquaintances and I don't like it. It's part of why I don't have a smartphone. I worry that I'll be unable to stop myself from being constantly plugged in to the Zuckersphere.

What is with the Alex Jones tag on your Bandcamp page?

CL: That's the guy we sampled in "I'm a human". Although if any of his lawyers ask, that's a joke response and I actually recorded my impression of him for it.

MN: The events, characters and firms depicted in the song are fictitious. Any similarity to actual persons, living or dead, or to actual firms, is purely coincidental.

What does “ether” mean to you?

CL: Ether was considered the fifth element in classical science. Earth, water, fire, and air were all terrestrial, things you could smell and taste and feel. Ether was the mysterious force through which all energy flowed and which gave things life. If you want to conceive of it in modern scientific terms, I think of it as the electromagnetic force. The strong and weak nuclear forces hold together matter but electricity animates it, and in electronic music you are sculpting that energy into something even more intangible: an emotional or psychological force that compels a reaction in people. But really, Maureen came up with the title so she should probably answer the question...

MN: Chris's answer is way cooler. The long and short of it is, that it's the name of a setting on one of my synths. When I'm working on something in Ableton, I normally title it based on a setting, or a riff. I don't like to sit around and think of titles for things...if I had my way, everything would just be numbered and we could be done with it.

You released Letters with Friends back in December, in this short period to now releasing Ether arP,  how have you grown?

MN: They're two totally different projects under the umbrella of Bloodhype. That's the beauty of me using this moniker--the album I released before Letters was an instrumental soundtrack to a Space Western movie that doesn't exist.... so... no real themes happening here. Letters With Friends is a collaborative album, so every track is influenced by a different artist and their style. A lot of my musical decisions on that album were reactive to what they gave me.

How are you staying busy during this Covid-19 pandemic?

CL: I'm focusing on my garden and doing way too much DuoLingo. There's someone in my league that keeps getting just enough points to take the lead every time I step away and then I go back and take the lead again. We've been going back and forth so much that we're thousands of points ahead of the person in third. I think I might be focusing more on beating this person than I am on learning Spanish...

MN: Lots of little projects: cooking for my housemates, crafts, gardening, playing with the cats. I also have adapted a cat-like lifestyle, ie, lots of naps, lounging around, staring at the wall. I've been not working/barely working since January when the restaurant closed (I was the Chef de Cuisine at La Sirena Clandestina) so this is really just an extension of my planned time off. I'm also helping my friends open a restaurant, which, what a WILD time to be doing that, so we go to the space to breathe in construction dust every once and awhile. I really should read a book.