Having spent the last 7-8 years channelling their inner Carter & Cash on their Country Moog album ‘Western Ware’ and documentary film ‘Cowgirls & Synthesizers’, Texan bionic bubblepunk couple HYPERBUBBLE take a step back with ‘The Singles’ to go forwards.
Presenting 17 synthpunk tales of supermarkets, cyborgs and sexy surveillance, HYPERBUBBLE have always embraced the idea of the singular form, whether physically, digitally or virtually…
Focussing on the earlier phase of the catalogue from 2004 to 2016, the collection comes remastered on neon green vinyl and CD via the Texas punk label Kaniption Records. Not only that, the package comes with a HYPERBUBBLE sticker, an 11″ x 17″ poster, 3 club cards, an autographed valentine, and a download code for ‘The Singles’ album + 16 bonus tracks including 7 previously unreleased remixes.
Jess and Jeff DeCuir chatted to ELECTRICITYCLUB.CO.UK from across the Atlantic about cats, 1-800 numbers, secret agents, UFOs and the art of the singles compilation in the fun colourful world of HYPERBUBBLE…
So we are old enough to have been in the era of the 45RPM single at its peak as well CD and cassette singles, but what would you define as a “single” in this streaming era?
Jeff: I think it’s defined as the song you pick to represent the album, so it may not have anything to do with the physical format that it’s on, although some of the songs on this collection have been vinyl 7 inchers. Sometimes the single will be before the album to give an idea of the concept, the cover art and the vibe, something that’s going to be representative.
Jess: It’s the earworm that you can’t get out of your head, it’s definitely representative of the best of the album, the one you want to push up front that might get more airplay.
Jeff: In terms of thinking what Jess was saying, in terms of selecting the songs, you tend to choose one that might be very concise and not one with a long excursion in the middle eight that goes off on an experimental journey! Something that is more in the indie pop realm to send out to represent the album to get that message across quick.
Would you also say the “single” is the song that is perhaps the most “visual” because it’s usually the one you make the video for?
Jess: THAT’S GOOD! I hadn’t thought of that…
Jeff: I’d never thought of that either, when you said that, it made me think of record cover art for the singles releases, that’s the same kind of idea.
It was the “visual” that got me into HYPERBUBBLE through the ‘Candy Apple Daydreams’ video, it’s a catchy song in itself anyway but the video summed up what HYPERBUBBLE were about in that 3 minutes…
Jeff: I think that’s pretty perceptive of you… maybe we were consciously branding and thinking along the same terms. I mean if we were going to do one video, what’s it going to say about the group? There’s the whole cat thing, the espionage thing, the technology, a bit of political messaging woven into the pop lyrics in a subversive manner…
Jess: …solving mysteries! *laughs*
Jeff: Yeah! When we sat down with the directors of the video and threw in our own ideas, influences and concepts. That particular video had everything from the British TV series ‘The Avengers’ to American cartoons like ‘Scooby Doo’ where they’re following paw prints on the floor with a magnifying glass! *laughs*
Jess: There’s something about ‘Candy Apple Daydreams’ that harks back to PINK FILTH, our band before HYPERBUBBLE. There was a song on our pink vinyl album with a lyric that went “Pineapple pinwheel, strawberry sweet surprise”, so ‘Candy Apple Daydreams’ really fits into that whole aesthetic, that bubblegum pop mixed with punk and synthpop.
Jeff: I have a really fun fact about the instruments used on ‘‘Candy Apple Daydreams’, it was done on an Ensoniq EPS that used floppy disks. This particular keyboard had passed through several bands but it started off with MINISTRY, so still had all their drum and bass samples on it. We thought it was really funny all those harsh aggro sounds were now being used to record songs like ‘Candy Apple Daydreams’! *laughs*
At one point though, the keys were getting stuck so we had to take it in to an electronics store… they opened it up and there was all this fine white powder clogging everything up!! We had to spray it out! *laughs*
Jess: YOU NEVER TOLD ME THAT JEFF! I couldn’t wait to get rid of that keyboard, it was too heavy, too big! *laughs*
So was there a reason for ‘The Singles’ album in the sense that you’ve been busy doing the ‘Western Ware’ Country Moog album and the ‘Cowgirls & Synthesizers’ film, it’s almost as if you’re reminding people that for all the fun of your “cowboy” period, you are a synthpop band?
Jeff: Chi! You’ve got that 100% right! It was a refocussing. When I brought the idea up with Jess, she asked the same thing, what is the reasoning behind doing this? My line of thinking was exactly what you said. In more physical terms, when you go to your phone and look up HYPERBUBBLE on any streaming service, the most recent things that come up are the “cowboy” and movie stuff. Our earliest records are all the way at the bottom! *laughs*
We have gone through all kinds of experimental excursions doing soundtracks and actual films and concept records, so ‘The Singles’ is a reframe of the group.
Jess: There was something about having a curated collection or “best of”, we just had our 25th wedding anniversary and I realised the band is about that old as well. This was a good time to take a look back and so people don’t have to search arounds as like Jeff said, things get buried online.
I remember Jeff used to make fun of me when we started dating because I used to always play this cassette tape of SQUEEZE singles that I had since I was a teenager and he said “you know there’s a whole bunch of albums by this band?”; he bought me all the CDs of their albums but you know, I just loved having all those hits singles, memorising all the lyrics… I know we’re not SQUEEZE but this was a chance to do something fun and visually oriented like that. Jeff did the lion share of that on the artwork and even rehashed an old image and made it look cool and new.
Jeff: Different people have different feelings about “greatest hits” records, there are the snobs like me who go “you need to have the entire catalogue” but ‘The Singles’ compilation is the specific mixes that were released as singles and typically, they are different versions and edits from the albums. These sorts of things depend on the band as to whether a singles compilation makes sense. But when we were making ours, we were aware that these singles tend to have Jess on lead vocals, are very short and they tend to be very upfront and structured in very pop format. So it was an easy compilation to make, so then it was “how do these songs hit you when you line them up in order?”, it was about the psychological reaction to it while we were editing.
Jess: There’s no mistake that this is a summer release as well 🙂
Jeff: I think a singles compilation also kind of tells a story, it’s a history album… you can see hear the band starting with more minimal instrumentation and having a more simplified structure and then getting into dance and funk, then getting into instrumental ambience, and then getting into multi-tracked layered vocals like on the ‘Candy Apple Daydreams’ album. You get to hear the band progress.
For the tracklisting, are there rules? Because rules help control the fun 😉
Jeff: Yes, in editing, we were fitting the maximum you could on one side of vinyl for best sound. Jessica was very good as a sounding board for a lot of that stuff. It was easy at the beginning because we had put those songs out as “singles” in one form or another. There were maybe a couple that didn’t get used for one reason or another, so we were sort of left with what we have, it was easy to do.
Jess: We were lamenting the loss of ‘Another Ride’ which didn’t make the cut…
Jeff: Yes, we did put it out as a digital single when we first released the ‘Solid Pop’ album but I didn’t like the mix, it didn’t feel like it fit sonically… we did one of those things were we tried to re-record it and do an updated version. But we realised what’s really special about these songs is they captured us at a particular stage in our lives where we were really fresh and hot and into these tracks to have the energy to dedicate to them, and the moment is captured there in those recordings. So to redo them, it didn’t have the same spirit. Unfortunately, the bass on that was too loud, that was the biggest crime and it had a synth line that was just hard to make sound good with the rest of the record. So the running order had to have a flow to them as well.
Now ‘Leon’ was a song that people were going to want to have on the record but at the same time, it was not put at the beginning of the album where it should have been chronologically with stuff from the first album because it didn’t fit in with the flow, it was more suited as the denouement for the album. While sequencing, we imagined ‘MoogZilla versus Korgatron’ as the climax, ‘Leon’ as the denouement, and ‘Hot Pink’ as the credits rolling at the end of a movie.
So although the basic album runs chronologically, there are exceptions like ‘Welcome To Infinity’ which ends Side A when it should be after the Candy Apple Daydreams’ songs?
Jeff: Yes, that was the idea of being on vinyl, that’s a semi-instrumental song that fades and goes into wind synthesizer effects so it feels like you have to flip the record over to see what’s next.
Obviously you can’t fit everything on, so was it quite easy to not include the stuff from ‘Dee Rocks The Galaxy’ or the Manda Rin collaboration and focus on just HYPERBUBBLE?
Jeff: I think that’s true, me and Jessica talked about that…
Jess: …I was reflecting on our live shows and what were the high energy songs that we performed again and again, it’s like that so things do need to be streamlined with no collaborations, although that could be a whole other album, collaborations with HYPERBUBBLE *laughs*
Jeff: Something else Jessica said was not to include live versions because it would break the mood of it all being studio. And a singular experience.
One of my favourites is ‘Non-Biodegradable Hazardous Waste Disposal’ which is just a mad song but immediate and very catchy, what was on your mind when you wrote that?
Jeff: It’s actually a politically motivated song in the sense that it was about surveillance and having your communications being easily read… a lot of that is being done in the name of safety but at the same time, I was wondering “who is the person who actually does this job?”, it’s a very voyeuristic job so does it take a particular personality to do it? It’s a little pervy, you’re spying on people. It brought to mind an old movie from 1967 called ‘Attack Of The Eye Creatures’ where these guys are spying on people on their first date and getting too excited about it. It was a sarcastic look at all that.
Jess: It’s funny, when I’m singing it live, I should be thinking about the words more than I am, I kind of just like the beat and the rhythm of it. I think of it more like a toxic relationship so I would emphasise certain words when doing it live with lots of eye connections with the audience and pointing.
Jeff: Yes, it’s being sung like a love song, it’s very methaphorical!
It’s like your ‘Every Breath You Take! *laughs*
Jeff: It really is, it’s the techno version! The key line that lets you know this relationship is possibly being related to technology, it goes “another lonely cybernetic spy, you got a lovely pair of X-Ray eyes”, and then the Brain Wilson line “inside-outside-CIA”
Jess: It’s very Brian Wilson with a nod to THE BEACH BOYS with the “bah-bah-bah-bah” vocals.
What inspired the quite surreal ‘Chop Shop Cop’?
Jess: Mostly Jeff’s brain! *laughs*
Jeff: I think ‘Chop Shop Cop’ was quite surreal in that it was a collage of lyrics that was cut ‘n’ paste to break things down to abstraction. It was made to create imagery and based on 70s television cop shows that we were raised on but also shows like ‘The Prisoner’, this idea of having a number instead of a name. It’s our way to mock and question authority, talking about the ego and the intention of those who are in authority. It was playing around with the theme but also poking a bit of fun.
You mentioned ‘The Prisoner’ and your visual aesthetic on your artworks is very bright colours like ‘The Prisoner’. I’ve been rewatching ‘UFO’ and one thing about that and the way other series like ‘Department S’ are filmed isn’t how you would do it now, it’s like the colours make it otherworldly… was this on your mind when doing HYPERBUBBLE in that it’s as much a visual art project as it is musical?
Jeff: I think ‘The Singles’ cover looks VERY ‘UFO’ and if you look at the chronology of our shows, Jess looks like she’s come off ‘UFO’ and also ‘Jem & The Holograms’, the packaging of those particular products. In ‘The Prisoner’, it’s a very clear-cut difference between the monochromatic clothing Number Six and the various Number Twos are wearing, and the variety of colors in the clothes that the villagers are wearing. They’re in a daze, not really aware and haven’t come down on one side of the fence, they’re just floating around *laughs*
Jess: We watch a lot of Italian sci-fi from the 60s as well. This is all old school now because whenever you say ‘The Avengers’, everyone is thinking of the Marvel Universe. But back in the day, when my parents were dating, they were watching the 60s British cult TV show ‘The Avengers’ and ‘The Prisoner’ so that’s where my love of those came from. I remember when Jeff and I would first watch ‘The Avengers’ and they were all in black and white, and then when they went to colour… WOW! How the colours popped out from Emma Peel’s lipstick to her hair and her cute catsuits, it was a cool look. So it was very vibrant and combined with the whole spies and mysteries thing. I loved that whole idea of retro-futurism, something that harks back to the past but there’s something futuristic about it.
Jeff: Yeah! Atompunk!
So for each of you, which are your favourite three key tracks on this album?
Jess: That’s a tough one! I can start off by saying one of the three is ‘Leon’; that’s for sentimental reasons, Leon was my first cat and Leon was like no other cat. I mean everyone that met that cat saw that this cat thought it was a dog! It would want to follow us around the neighbourhood, he would put his little paw on the door knob, sitting up on a stool and meow until I let him outside. I should not have let him go outside but he was one of those cats! *laughs*
Jeff: I think ‘Synesthesia’ is one song that represents everything sonically, artistically, constructionally and thematically what we’re about, I would go with that, there’s a lot of neat things going on. To me, ‘UFO Beach Party’ I like a lot because the message on that is important, it’s about inclusion and that’s a message that needs to be voiced at the moment. Now ‘Psychic Connection’…
Jess: …aaargh, you stole mine! *laughs*
Jeff: You know, when we were putting the album together, ‘Psychic Connection’ was one that actually had a technical problem in it because it didn’t have a good low end synth playing. So we had to do a little bit of re-recording and remastering, I replayed some bass Moog to give it more body because we couldn’t lose that one! There’s a certain mysterious vibe to it and the delivery of Jess’ vocals is really cool on that.
Jess: I agree totally 100% with that, but ‘Psychic Connection’ was going to be my second, I’m going to claim that. Performing it live, I can’t even describe the audience impact because that was one where I made sure I made eye contact even though I didn’t have my glasses and couldn’t see! As soon as the low end of the synthesizer chords came in, there was just this connection. The BLONDIE influence is there for me when I sing that song, I was channelling Debbie Harry who was one of my heroes growing up. Just the vibe of that song, the mysteriousness and sexiness of it, it’s a very sexy song, telling people to check out my 1-800 line which has innuendos too!
Then ‘Candy Apple Daydreams’ would be another one because for all the reasons you mentioned Chi, it encapsulates us as a band and who we are. It was another one that was so much fun to perform live.
What are you hope you hoping to achieve with ‘The Singles’ if anything? Is it streaming as an entity of its own or is it physical only?
Jeff: It’s on all the streaming platforms… it’s was what you were saying at the beginning, it’s definitely meant to refocus. There has been a lot of buzz about the film ‘Cowgirls & Synthesizers’ which we’ve spent the past three years promoting. There’s a DVD coming out so that’s another reason for ‘The Singles’ so if people are going to be checking out HYPERBUBBLE online, they’re going to be taken to a wham-bam version of the best of our stuff. It’s directed at newcomers and made for the streaming sites to go to the top of the list or as “newly added”.
Jess: I’m even thinking more grassroots or whatever you say, it’s also for our fans who enjoy collecting our music and having that one stop shop with something you can hold in your hand that has all of these really cool songs by this one band.
Jeff: That’s true what Jess says, otherwise we would have made this just digital….
Jess: …there’s people who enjoy packaging and take good care of their stuff.
Jeff: We wanted that Christmas Day feeling because we remembered buying vinyl back in the day, you open it and shake it to see what stuff comes out. So we really wanted to give the experience of “WOW! You get this sticker and it comes with cards and a poster! WOO!” *laughs*
Jess: That’s really true, this is like an opportunity that probably won’t happen again and because we’re not going to keep recycling these songs… it’s got to be “what’s next?”
I wanted to ask you about this whole notion of “playing the algorithm”, it drives me mad all these acts releasing singles every few weeks in this scattergun approach with no thematic connection to any body of work?
Jeff: There is something about having a body of music in one place, especially when we’re talking about vinyl. When I hear from young and up-and-coming musicians talk about the algorithm, my feeling is you need to go down to the photocopy shop, put up posters and let your friends know that you’re playing at the club down the street and don’t rely on that algorithm! In fact, make it super hip to shun it and snub it! When you are in a small scene, you become a family of like-minded people and then you’ve got a scene that’s yours instead of paying for promotion ads and nonsense like that! So what I’m saying is, we don’t care, we don’t worry about that! If you look at the pre-sales we’ve been having , we see the names and recognise all of them.
Jess: If you’ve been around long enough and people like you, if they want to find your music, they will find it. But there’s something to be said for getting your music out there, I still feel like “wow!”, I don’t know that the algorithm can help with that at all! This whole notion of the algorithm, I agree with Jeff there… people are just slaves to that and in my mind, it’s not the real world. I mean, this whole how much we’re having to promoting on social media? There should be other modes, that’s why bands play live and that’s why bands go on tour.
Jeff: Sitting at home doesn’t always pay off, it’s the people buying the records we’ve met on this journey. We didn’t meet ELECTRICITYCLUB.CO.UK because we were chasing an algorithm, we went to England and met you at an underground music event put on by a local punk rock influenced promoter! *laughs*
Jess: It does make me miss the MySpace days a bit! This was how we connected with a lot of these UK bands and it was so easy! *laughs*
Jeff: Absolutely! We were very much a MySpace band!
What are your future plans?
Jeff: We’re working on the licensing for the DVD release of ‘Cowgirls & Synthesizers’ for hopefully towards the end of this year.
Jess: I’d love to have a streaming capability for the film… you can shoot high but to be honest, Amazon aren’t accepting documentary submissions of any kind, but maybe someone in the know could help us to navigate that? But people who just want to get their hands on the film, the DVD is kind of the first step. The cinema screenings were very limited and unique but being able to see it in your own home is great.
ELECTRICITYCLUB.CO.UK gives its heartfelt thanks to HYPERBUBBLE
‘The Singles’ is released as a neon green vinyl LP with poster + sticker + download card + club cards + autographed valentine as well as CD and digital formats, available from https://hyperbubble.bandcamp.com/album/the-singles
https://www.facebook.com/hyperbubble
https://www.instagram.com/hyperbubbleofficial/
https://open.spotify.com/album/0EFruXFNSdraMMiqABb6zL
Text and Interview by Chi Ming Lai
15th July 2025
Follow Us!