Chances are, you woke up on January 1 and realized none of this was a dream. That’s the bad news. The good news is that we’re all trapped here together, and our dystopian society of paranoia and angst, cradled by a pandemic that is uneager to subside, is properly soundtracked by the shadow sounds of Ex-Hyena.
The dark electronic duo of Reuben Bettsak and Bo Barringer return with a low-end hum on January 21 with new single “Capture the Stills,” the follow up to October’s “Nightmare Pills” and the latest to be featured off their forthcoming sophomore album, this year’s Moon Reflections. It arrives complete with a b-side remix courtesy of Kentucky producer Control I’m Here that delves deeper into the track’s soulful, yet sinister, vibes.
“‘Capture the Stills’ is dark and menacing,” says Bettsak. “Bo wrote the lyrics to this one… It certainly fits the vibe, and themes that Ex-Hyena often covers. To me, it's like falling into a David Lynch movie void, and witnessing two characters in a volatile relationship, or something like that. This was the last song written for the second LP, and I'm glad it made it on the album.”
This latest single, following in the footsteps of Ex-Hyena’s 2021 debut album Artificial Pulse and mixed by Dave Westner, is another brazen move forward for the creative songwriting pair, taking Ex-Hyena’s trademark sound of dual vocals, trembling percussion, and dark synths, and adding a more richer, lush sound that incorporates hip-hop-inspired beats and a wider creative canvas that snapshots our daily decay. It’s a grander sense of claustrophobic minimization, a panoramic view of the world around us, and a stark spin around the shadows that lurk just out of view of the mind’s eye.
“I wrote the words to this one at a time when I was going through a bit of a dark period,” adds Barringer. “I wasn’t really trying to reflect that necessarily but it’s kind of hard to deny a line like ‘A soul created to be crushed’. But the song is also about how difficult it is to slow down time and take in the smaller moments because life threatens to speed by you at a million miles an hour. You can’t stop the video as it’s rolling, but maybe you can screenshot it as it passes you by.”
Screenshots of all kaleidoscopic colors and moods are at play on “Capture the Stills,” which evokes the forthcoming LP’s twists and turns with a sound stretched out into prog-rock territory, boasting songs that delve into memories and the intricacies of our minds, playing out thematically like noir movie scenes. Ex-Hyena is a band constantly evolving, and here they display a collaborative songwriting acumen shared by two musical minds that have been communicating ideas for decades. And the world at play in Artificial Pulse is no longer relegated to some far off timeline horizon; the world of Ex-Hyena is entrenched in the here and now.
“I kind of lost interest in dystopian TV and movies around the time we realized that 50 percent of this country wanted a fascist dictator,” admits Barringer. “No Black Mirror, No Handmaid’s Tale, No Squid Game. The world was already becoming too close to that. Turn on the fucking news. Somehow a similar vibe comes through in the music though. You can try to outrun the devil but sooner or later he’s gonna catch you.”
And when he does, he’ll have “Capture the Stills” on his demonic playlist.
“Ex-Hyena does reflect a dystopian fantasy of sorts, and tapping into those themes can seem dark in an increasingly chaotic world where our reality feels dystopian,” says Bettsak. “I do tackle those themes because they are important, and relevant to me. But the funny thing is that I also tap into that dystopian fantasy world as a form of escapism. We've written these songs in a world where we are more isolated than ever in a lot of ways. I love being in my house, but I'm in it a lot. [laughs.] So, I'm using my imagination to take me to different places, create different characters, future cities with twisted technology, etc. In these times music really is extremely therapeutic. Writing and creating art is so important right now for our sanity. And I hope things in this world become less chaotic.”
Maybe by then, we’ll wake up to better news.