Apidae
Apidae is the production project of London-based producer and multi-instrumentalist Greg Hummell. Equally influenced by the textures and soundscapes of post-rock and grooves of downtempo and chillwave, Apidae mix acoustic and electronic sounds and instrumentation to create a blend of the organic and synthetic likened to artists like Radiohead, Four Tet, Caribou, & Bonobo. Taking its name from the scientific term for a family of bee species, Apidae grew from humble beginnings as a solo production endeavour into a collaborative venture, recording and performing with a rotating family of musicians, and relocating from its birthplace of Kent to London.
Apidae signed to Stockholm-based independent label Dumont Dumont to issue its first official release: the debut single “Turning Tides”. Featuring distinctive instrumentation (including Hang drum, analogue synthesis and Fender Rhodes Piano) and falsetto vocals from producer and songwriter Drew JH York, the single premiered on the Line of Best Fit, where it was praised for it’s “hypnotic forward thinking production, and exotic pitched percussion”, and described as “a gorgeous confluence of live instrumentation and electronically guided pulses” by Q Magazine. Introspective Indie-pop single "All I Need" follows; the first cut from upcoming Everything Is Alright EP releasing February 2020
When talking about the album Apidae said “I wanted to entirely flip my usual approach to songwriting when composing this album – where Apidae songs had predominantly been personal, and autobiographical previously, I instead wanted to write as close to the opposite as I could determine – to write about all humans instead of myself, and abstractly rather than descriptively. This decision felt like the catalyst that inspired most songs to fall into place lyrically. In a sentence– this album is about the human condition, and what that means in the context of a modern, digital world – with the goal of capturing this sonically by juxtaposing natural, organic sounding acoustic instrumentation with definitively non-human, synthetic, electronic sounds and noises. It’s about moments, experiences, memory, identity and mortality.”
They then went on to talk about their track: “All I Need also effectively encapsulates the musical theme of the album – the combination of organic and synthetic sounds and instrumentation. There’s a nylon string guitar and midi sequenced arpeggiator that play exactly the same part throughout the entire song, note-for-note, with the goal that they blend into a single voice. Between them, the pronouns ‘you’/‘your’ and ‘I’ repeat about 45 times throughout the song, more than once a line on average. But the song was never written as a conversation between two people, more a communication with less controllable aspects of oneself. Things that sometimes feel as if they’re creations of a separate consciousness – endorphins, hormones and chemical signals.”