Hyooman
Consider Hyooman a pandemic baby. The band formed in October 2020 when Leng Moua (songwriter, vocals, guitar) set out to record an album and recruited his friends Tamara Alswager (guitar), McCoy Seitz (drums), Dillon Marchus (bass), and Elise Bremer (keys). Hyooman operates somewhere in between 90s/early 2000s alt-rock and the lo-fi bedroom pop of Alex G. Their music focuses on hooky riffs, group vocals, and maintaining a steady 'bop' and groove.
The band members were joined by Leng Moua who had separate relationships with each band member. He played in separate
bands with Tamara Alswager and McCoy Seitz. Meanwhile, Leng and Elise Bremer had been longtime friends. Leng befriended
Dillon Marchus while attending Dillon’s shows in the Twin Cities. By October 2020, Leng finished writing an album and set out to
record it at McCoy’s studio, Casino Time, and recruited each member to form a band.
Hyooman are:
Leng Moua (songwriter, vocals, guitar),
McCoy Seitz (drums, vocals),
Tamara Alswager (guitar, vocals),
Elise Bremer (keys, vocals),
Dillon Marchus (bass)
The Interview
Who inspired you to make music?
Leng: I can’t say that anyone inspired me to make music. I just loved music and I wanted to participate in it. Ideas usually inspire me to write music. But my friends inspire me to keep making music. I want to play shows with them. I want to share music with them. I want to engage with them.
Elise: My Dad, who always had pianos etc. around the place and musicians like Joni Mitchell whose CDs I discovered as a youngster.
McCoy: Probably my dad. He always had a nylon string sitting around that he would strum some chords on now and then. As a kid I was pretty mesmerized by that. It always seemed like the sound would just come out of nowhere.
Dillon: Ope, here goes any shred of street cred I may have had: Les Claypool of Primus really appealed to me as a 14 year old kid who thought ‘weird stuff’ was somehow by default just better than ‘normal stuff’. There’s a lyric on the Brown Album in which he says, “At 14 I got myself a 4 string and taught myself to play.” I was highly impressionable.
Tamara: My cousin’s pop punk band when I was in middle school.
What or who inspired you to "Half brain"?
Leng: I had the idea for the music video before I wrote the song. I wanted to do a music video similar to Everclear’s “Everything to Everyone” – where it looks like one entire shot and the camera is constantly moving at a steady pace. The music video idea provided the inspiration for the music. Regarding the lyrics, I was drawing from different conversations and experiences at the time. A lot of it had to do with relationships and self-perception.
What is your creative process like?
Leng: I will bring songs to the band and together we build them. Regarding songwriting, I try to document every idea: a chord progression, a melody, a lyric, a song title, etc. I record them on my phone mostly. Later I revisit them, sit with the idea, I play it over and over again until a song reveals itself. It’s a lot like searching in the dark. You’re hands are out in front of you, you’re feeling your way through, and you’re trying to grab onto something.
Elise: When I write keyboard parts I listen to what Leng has down on repeat until I start to hear something that I am missing. I also listen to music for inspiration for certain sounds.
McCoy: As a drummer, I try to just stay out of the way and serve the song as best as I can. As an engineer, I just try to make the sessions fun and keep the pressure low. Having a pizza oven in the studio is a big part of my creative process.
Dillon: I don’t do anything too complex. I listen mainly to what the vocals are doing for cues of where to either match some movement or for space for counterpoint, while also paying attention to the chord progression. If it’s been explicitly stated that the drum pattern on Leng’s demo is going to be part of the rhythm bed of the final version of the song, I’ll take the kick, snare and hat pattern into consideration; using them almost as triggers and gates for note placement and duration. Our sessions have been pretty loose and lively, coming up with some aspects of the feel the day of the session. We’ll have often times never have played the song(s) we’re working on that day together in the same room until we’re hitting record.
Tamara: The lovely Leng Moua shows us a song and with the rest of us being song writers it's fun to help finalize it and make his ideas come to life.
Who would you most like to collaborate with?
Leng: It wouldn’t be music related. I’d say Nick Mullens; he’s a comedian in NY. We wouldn’t get any work done. He’d do impressions of Jeff Goldblum and I’d laugh the whole time.
Elise: Hmmm, Linda Perry.
McCoy: Shawn Everett always looks like he's having fun. The late Richard Swift would be very high on the list as well. Maybe Stephin Merritt but that would be intimidating.
Dillon: At the moment: Windows96
Tamara: I would love to collaborate with Adrienne Lenker of Big Thief. She is a brilliant musician and hyooman.
What is the most useful talent you have?
Leng: Midway through a conversation, I can replace myself with a cardboard cutout.
Elise: Very German question (I’m German)...I have a lot of talents and not one of them is useful.
McCoy: I have a good memory. Helpful for rubik's cubes and holding grudges.
Dillon: Guitar/Bass repair/setup and Gear maintenance (soldering, trouble shooting)... mainly being a cheapskate.
Tamara: To be able to just listen and empathize. I don't know if that would be considered a 'talent" per se, but it goes a long way and I hope it becomes intrinsically prolific in our societal structures.
If you could change anything in the past, what would it be?
Leng: I'd stomp on that fish that evolved to humans while wearing clown shoes.
Elise: Start playing music with these hooligans sooner.
McCoy: Ending the Simpson's before they jumped the shark.
Dillon: To have Pete Weber lose the 69th Annual US Open Bowling Championship. Who do I think I am? Who does he think he is? Who is he and how would that change the course of history? That’s a mystery that we’ll never know the answer to.
Tamara: Well, other than preventing the horrific incidents of terror in our world's history, I'd love to have Waffle Crisp back.
How do you feel the Internet (especially Social Media platforms) has impacted the music business?
Leng: The internet has made music more accessible to listeners and creators. You can learn music, listen to music, or upload your own music as long as you can connect to the internet. Whenever I complain about music and the internet – I wonder if it’s just my nostalgia for the past.
Elise: In regard to social media, I think it has probably made the visual aspects of making music even more important.
McCoy: To me the internet isn’t really a good or bad thing for music. It just is. The social media part I have more opinions on but mostly I just don’t like the expectation that has been set - that to be successful you have to show up almost fully realized with this cohesive aesthetic. I think the visual side of music has always been really important but social media has made it almost more important than the music in a lot of ways.
Dillon: Most everything that is artistic or the least bit interesting that’s been documented throughout history can be accessed on a whim... that’s pretty cool, but a little daunting as a new artist. Live music is still tough to beat, but maybe I just want to stay in and stream episodes of Heathcliff.
Tamara: There's definitely pros and cons. When I moved to Minneapolis I was able to find shows and the music community through social media. On an ecology of musical livelihoods- you can almost stream anyone's music for free online nowadays, so, it can be hard for artists and labels to be compensated in that matter.
Hyooman is...?
Leng: Hyooman (or “Human”) is the spirit behind everything in the band: the music, the vibe, the approach. I wanted to make music that made me feel human again. We should be having fun. The music should sound like humans are singing and playing the instruments. That’s what bands represented to me. The songs are about human observations, relationships, emotions, and ideas. It was overall the right word. The alternate spelling “Hyooman” is just a way to have fun with it; it’s not quite “human.”
What’s next for you?
Leng: We’re still learning how to be a band. We will be playing shows and we are working on our live performance. Meanwhile, we are almost finished with our album that we will release soon. We are even writing songs for a second album.
