Hum

Hum's sonic universe is a solipsistic world that exists on its own terms, a maelstrom of sensations and colors, a thick metallic vortex of fuzztoned guitars with a silent core at the center like the eye of a hurricane - equal parts homegrown and high-tech. Hum serves up a cacophony of overlapping harmonics and dense shards of electric guitars providing a counterpoint to Talbott's tales of innocence corrupted and love lost, the past mourned, the theories of physics and relativity applied to modern-day relationships and contemporary attitudes. Hum takes you on a interior journey that encompasses the gnarled rhythms and magic melodies of "Comin' Home," the rumble in the jungle of "Isle of the Cheetah," tripping through the salamander-infested waters of "Afternoon with the Axolotls," and the back-to-nature de-evolution of "If You Are to Bloom" and "Green To Me."
Eschewing individual personalities to the whole, Hum is much, much more than the sum of its young, fast and scientific parts. "We are democratic to a fault," says Matt. We barely function sometimes because if one guy doesn't like a part, even if the other three do, we'll rework the idea until we're happy with it. That's why it took so long to finish this album [DIH]." Hum's songs are rorchacht tests, with Talbott preferring to leave their interpretation open to the listener, though he will admit "they're mostly just love songs when you break them down." Abstract lyrics jump out to form concrete images. "I'm thinking of a number between everything and two," sings Matt on "Apollo," a song about a woman who'd most certainly not prefer an astronaut, but a companion more down-to-earth, with his feet on the ground. "It's molecules of you." Hum break down personal relationships into their physical components and turn those particles into whole songs.
You could say Hum were the thinking man's rock band, though not to their face. "We don't take ourselves very seriously, but we take what we do pretty seriously," insists Matt. "I like the sound you found," sings Talbott in "Ms. Lazarus." "I like the way it feels here coming down." Like a camera obscura freezing an image for eternity, Hum is all about turning space-time and its continuum upside down, rethinking rock & roll in a new light, turning emotions into a nuclear fission of colors, sounds, feedback and trance-n-dance. Hum be dropping some mad science.