Traipsing The Streets With Hedgehog
Britain is a nation steeped in musical history. Manchester is a city refusing to let go of that. It has led us to a place of trying to honour the old whilst creating the new. The city has associated itself so heavily with being the birthplace of bands like Oasis and The Smiths that it is struggling to be the birthplace of anything else - at least in the eyes of the general public and rest of UK.
When walking through the streets of Manchester, you can feel the history and art that these streets have housed. What you don’t feel is the art being made today. It is not yet history.
That feeling could not be further from the truth.
I spent an evening with alternative band Hedgehog. I saw them play in Yes Basement, Manchester on January 17th and I sat down with them for a conversation on February 21st. The interview revolved around me referencing my prepared questions - and having to completely change them.
The band could not stick to one straight answer. The night was full of outlandish statements said too deadpan to be serious, shouts of “Don’t write that down!” and “It’s true!”
They said everything ironically - but never more than only slightly. “Art for art’s sake.”
Each member of Hedgehog is an artist within their own right. Usually, this can cause strife within a band as everyone will want artistic control. Hedgehog is the opposite. Their most important quality is their bond with one another. So, instead of this being an inhibition, they simply become extensions of each other when they create or spend time together. It appears to be like some sort of drug for them; being together and understanding that everything - every noise, every action - can mean something different. “Producing a sound with an instrument is an action as is falling over.” was said to me in regards to their experimental stage presence.
The band was originally “built from playing around El’s poetry.” I believe this is what has led to their gig feeling so heavily literature-based.
Their stage presence was nothing like I had ever seen. There was this kind of energy that bled into the crowd, but it didn’t make you jump into the air.
The drummer purposefully knocked his kit to the floor, their instruments constantly changed with layered vocals and counter melodies all wrapped together seamlessly. It was more than just a simple gig - it felt like a piece of prose being given a life.
With all of this being said, Hedgehog are an experimental band of young musicians. They started this project wanting to bring people together… different classes of society at least.” It’s a direct comparison to the way that they feel when together.
This generation has grown in the world of technology - old enough to remember the start but too young to have known the world before.
“In a world of alienation… art is a catalyst of change.” Hedgehog’s art comes from a place of wanting the world to feel the same as them when with one another. Their own anxieties evolve to create this immovable friendship and reality - their music is a product of that. There could not be one without the other. “How it sounds is like not that important,” as I was told during the evening.
Despite all of the theatrics within the gig, Hedgehog's performance felt honest and vulnerable. It was always clear that their show wasn’t an act. The experiments within their sound aren’t a deflection; they are an allowance of something true becoming something outward. Their combined need for the world to be “unfilled with hatred” morphed into this raw performance piece.
