Sessions | O Yuki Conjugate

Following their recent contribution to our residency podcast series on Hong Kong Community Radio, we were fortunate to speak to O Yuki Conjugate (AKA Andrew Hulme & Roger Horberry) to learn more about the inspiration behind their works and the history of the UK based music group.

How did the O Yuki Conjugate project begin?

Roger: The usual - bored teenagers who tried to make the music they wanted to hear. We loved weirdy stuff, there wasn’t much about, so we decided to make some. Quite punk really. And we’re still at it, nearly 40 years later. The oldest ambient punks in town.
Andrew: I think we were driven to make our own music, like so many others at the time. We wanted something different for our lives and were arrogant enough to think we had something to say.

What/Who were some of you and roger’s inspirations behind this project?

Roger: Jon Hassell, Brian Eno, Harold Budd, Michael Brook - basically the stuff coming out on the Editions EG label in the early eighties. Also the Factory bands, and early industrial music, particularly Cabaret Voltaire.
Andrew: When you’re 18 you just want to emulate your heroes. You end up doing it very badly and from that misinformed hash something else emerges. It’s new and it's its own hybrid. Very few people listened to ‘ambient’ music at the time. It was considered very highbrow and intellectual, more ‘concept' than music. So we ploughed a very lonely furrow in the 80s, despite attention from Europe. We were on the fringes of the post-industrial scene just exploring the music we liked. It wasn’t until ‘ambient' morphed into ‘chill out’ that things changed for us.

What does “dirty ambient” mean to you

Roger: It means it’s good to mix the rough with the smooth. It means allowing a bit of mess. It means being spontaneous, letting mistakes happen and working with them. It means whatever we want it to, really.
Andrew: It’s also a dig at ambient music in general. To call it ‘dirty’ is to denigrate it and - personally speaking - I think this sums up my sometimes antipathetical attitude towards it. The meaning of ‘Ambient’ has changed over the years, it now means 'easy listening’ and that’s a bit problematic.

You mentioned that O Yuki Conjugate is currently in the fourth incarnation, could you explain what that means?

Roger: Just that we’ve been through four line-ups over the years, with different people coming and going as the tide of history carries us along. We’re all still friends and occasionally meet up. We plan to work with Joe from OYC 2 soon.
Andrew: Sometimes the music dries up and the band disintegrates. When this first happened in 1991 we didn’t split up, just reformed, and this has become a habit. We can go into hibernation for 10 years and then re-emerge like some kind of ugly mutated butterfly.

How do you guys stay motivated and inspired to carry on with the project?

Roger: We’ve always got lots of ideas for new stuff, so for me it’s the satisfaction of doing something fresh. We’re still finding new areas to explore. If that ever stops, we’ll stop, but it seems to be working out so far.
Andrew: A recent revival of interest in us has given us the inspiration to create. It’s exciting right now as audiences seem willing to be pushed and tested. We’re currently in our most productive phase since the 80s and it feels good to be creating so much and have so many ideas. Playing live has been a great thing for us because we used to hate it now we thrive on it.

To find out more about O Yuki Conjugate, please check out their website.

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