G-U Interviews: Cidjian Graves (Hypnotic Brass Ensemble)
Interview and text by “Super” Jack Seda-Schreiber
The Hypnotic Brass Ensemble are a group of brothers who play music together. They have worked with countless of famous musicians from all over the hip hop, R&B and jazz spectrum and perhaps most famously were featured prominently on the Gorillaz album “Plastic Beach”. Jack skyped in with trombone player Cidjian “Saiph” Graves to talk about his work with Damon Albarn, the making of “Plastic Beach”, touring life as well as the crew’s upcoming album “The Bad Boys Of Jazz” and their works with other big names. Read on!
Jack: So, thank you so much for doing this, I really appreciate it!
Cidjian: No problem!
Jack: What inspired you guys to start making music?
Cidjian: Well, in our house, all of the members of Hypnotic Brass Ensemble are the sons of Phil Cochran, And our father pretty much… I’m not gonna say made us play, but I wouldn’t give him his full credit if I didn’t say that in some way. We grew up in a musical house and we all as tiny kids saw the performance and what was going on and we wanted to play… At 5 years old our dad gave us our instruments… but after about a year of seeing how much practice and training and everything that went with it (was required), we were very much keen on quitting and he did not allow us. So making us stick with it, is pretty much what got us to the point where we can be teenagers and get on school programs and see just how much dapper we were compared to the other kids and where we were at talent wise.
Jack: Any inspirations/influences?
Cidjian: Influences, at the time when we made Hypnotic Brass (as kids)… Wu Tang Clan were a very big inspiration. Just a group of MC’s who all had their own style and identity, that was a big inspiration on us. Outside of musical bands like Earth, Wind And Fire and The Isley Brothers. We were big fans of our father’s music as well. Our Dad has over 3,000 songs and influenced a lot of the early performers. And when I say early I mean like the 60’s, 70’s. He was a big inspiration on us kinda wanting to take what he did and go a little further with it. Our father was more about the mental and the spiritual, and what we was tryna do was take it a little further and bring it a little more down to earth, make it more for everybody.
Jack: That’s really cool. I was reading about your father earlier. I was also reading that you guys worked with Wu Tang, and since you mentioned them, that must have been really exciting!
Cidjian: Oh that was HUGE for us! When they offered us the show, they didn’t know, we did it for free! We opened for them at Brixton Academy, I had a crazy night after it, and yea, it was a very memorable experience. We did a track with Ghostface way earlier in our career, like 2004, No I.D. produced it. We had a little bit of a background with them. RZA remixed one of our songs, “War”, on one of his vinyl mixtapes or something like that. We had a bit of history with them by time we did that Brixton show. It was really dope to see their show from backstage, chillin with them upstairs away from the crowd, seeing them in their element and letting them know how they inspired us.
Jack: It must be really cool to work with your heroes like that!
Cidjian: Yea, we played with Prince! We played with Snoop Dogg! It just validates all the stuff we did before.
Jack: Were you guys aware of Gorillaz before you’re coming together?
Cidjian: Well we was aware of Gorillaz but we wasn’t aware of Damon Albarn specifically. The Gorillaz did “Dirty Harry”, we were fans of that stuff, we were fans of that for a while!
Jack: What was it like working with the Gorillaz in the studio?
Cidjian: It was really cool, actually. The studio is mostly Damon. He has his own studio in Portobello, London (Studio 13), and we were actually living in London for that year and we just kept going over there. Stopping through on a day off or week off, we would just do stuff, he would be like, “I got this in my head! Come thru and play it!” We weren’t even playing real songs, he was just literally, a musical mad scientist, We’d play it and then we’d come back a month later and the song we were playing on sounds nothing like what we were playing on last time. Crazy man, but mad fun and educational.
Jack: That sounds amazing! What was it like traveling with the entire band during the “Escape To Plastic Beach Tour”? There were so many musicians onstage; how did that work logistically?
Cidjian: That was wacky man… so good. We got to chill with Bobby Womack, dudes from The Clash, people who have been where we wanna go. It was always the older dudes talking with the younger cats about their crazy stories and how they’re much calmer now. There was different levels, you had De La Soul who were OG’s to us, and you had The Clash who were OG’s to everybody, even Damon. We had 3 tour buses, maybe even 4 or 5 but it was all about Bus 1, 2 and 3. And they all kinda split us up by our personalities. And of course they didn’t put all of Hypnotic in the same one, they kinda spread us through different ones. I was on the one with Maseo and MF DOOM. It was crazy.
Jack: Oh, that must have been a fun bus.
Cidjian: That WAS the fun bus… always smoking bud.
Jack: How did it feel to collaborate with Yasiin Bey (formerly Mos Def)?
Cidjian: We had already been working with Yasiin for a minute. Yasiin had heard we had met up with Damon in London, he thought it was through him. He was like “Aw yea! I made that hook up!” And we were like, “No, no, you didn’t!” Degrees of separation type of thing… us having that record with Mos on “Plastic Beach” is because of our relationship at that time.
Jack: So would you say you guys are the reason Mos Def is on the record?
Cidjian: Well, I wouldn’t say that… when Damon was putting that together, he was thinking of all these crazy mixes like a cook in the kitchen. “Well of course, I want you doing the horns. But I wanna match y’all with an MC.” Rhyme wise, Mos was the best to do that, and ya know he coulda used MC’s from The Pharcyde, coulda used De La, coulda used even Snoop (we were on that track too!) But it wasn’t the pairing that we had with Mos. We did a show last September in Paris with him, and it was probably the best show we’d ever done. That’s like our big brother Mos. We met him when we were playing on the streets in New York… big limo rolls by and it’s Mos… the relationship hit off from there!
Jack: You guys are so chock full of amazing stories! Now famously (or infamously) you guys were supposed to be on the album highlight “Broken” but were cut from the final product. Do you happen to know the reasoning behind this decision? If there was a reason for cutting it from the record, do you find it strange that Damon have you play it live?
Cidjian: The live thing we’re doing, that came about because we weren’t on the record. The original record… man when “Plastic Beach” came out, we were surprised to hear how little we were on it. And it’s Damon’s music, so we aren’t taking any credit or anything, but we worked on that record for a good 9 months. There were songs that we played on, and when we heard the album, they were electronic. We were sort of like his sketch pad, he would bounce ideas off of us and use little bits of em instead of the direct thing. So in the end they gave us our own features, which was really good for us and then they cut back because they didn’t wanna have our process to dominate the record. If you really look at it, it’s kinda like a relay, hot potato (with the guests). You couldn’t really have us all over the record like we expected or wanted to. So when he put it out, “Broken” sounded great on the record but when we did it live he was like, “live we definitely need you to come back on and lace it up”. He took our idea even further.
Jack: Well when you guys do it live it’s really good. My favorite version of the song is the one where you guys did it at La Musicale in 2010, and that is in my opinion the best version of “Broken”.
Cidjian: It’s crazy, cause we did it different every time! Every time was different, improv. I see some of them on YouTube. It was important to (Damon) that it was creative and different every time. So we never practiced it too much, we’d run through it for 2-3 minutes before the show, it was always free.
Jack: Were there any tracks that you worked on for the album that you were surprised was cut from the final product? Maybe perhaps any tracks you would have been featured on in addition to the three you have?
Cidjian: Well, on “Welcome To The World Of The Plastic Beach”, Hypnotic played that riff, but Damon mixed it with a synth to better match that Gorillaz sound. He gave us a lot of tips in recording on how to present that idea. When we heard it we were surprised, but not that we felt shorted or cut off. We have a real respect for his musical ear. We don’t share the same respect for a lot of the people out here or the people we work with, we come from the old school. We could get more out of Damon than we could get out of each other.
Jack: Knowing that the brass is electronic on that song actually explains a lot. I always thought that brass sounded weird.
Cidjian: I think they kept a certain brass element way under there so people could ask that question. But yea, we was (originally) all over that track.
Jack: In the Gorillaz fan community, a track called “Electric Shock” has never escaped our minds since it was teased before the album and then subsequently not put on the same album. Tell us, what can you guys recall about “Electric Shock” and why was it removed from the album?
Cidjian: It’s funny you ask that. I remember that specifically. We were surprised it wasn’t on there, we thought it would be a focal point of the record. Damon called us and hummed that riff and asked us to come to the studio tomorrow. It took a long day cause it was such a simple idea… DUN DUN DUN DUN DUN DUNNNNN. But he took that and then he turned it into something else, to what it sounds like now. I’m surprised it wasn’t on the record and we don’t know why.
Jack: We don’t even have a full version of the song, just odd little snippets.
Cidjian: We played it live too! We did a lot of concerts with Damon too like with The Good, The Bad And The Queen. And we even played it once or twice! So yea, we were really surprised it didn’t play a prominent role, but I think with EMI he still has a team, bureaucracy and all that. We just figured that’s what it came down too. They probably shaved a couple tunes off.
Jack: We really hope that track comes out in the future.
Cidjian: He’s like Prince man, he got vaults and vaults of stuff. Stuff he maybe don’t even plan to put out at all, but he got stuff in the crates, trust me.
Jack: It’s funny you mention The Good, The Bad And The Queen because that plays into my next question. In 2008, you guys did a guest spot at the Love Music Hate Racism Carnival with Damon Albarn’s other project, The Good, The Bad And The Queen. The song you guys performed according to setlist.fm was called “Carousel.” Now according to Jamie Hewlett, the “Plastic Beach” album was originally called “Carousel”. What can you guys tell us about this song? Does it have anything to do with the early “Plastic Beach” sessions?
Cidjian: You just reminded me of that! It might have been one of the ones that were actually on the record. Of course this was like 10 plus years ago so I can’t remember, but I do remember that title and that vibe. “Plastic Beach” took the idea of “Carousel” further. Like ya know with the “Sweepstakes”, beach, circus, carnival it took the idea further. Yea, I think the song we played was on there!
Jack: Do you remember which?
Cidjian: Nah I don’t. I’m tryna think of it right now but I can’t. But I think the one we played there was on it.
Jack: There was speculation that Gorillaz might bust out the single “Rock The House” during their 2018 live tour for the first time since 2002! Did you guys plan to take part in that performance due to the track’s heavy usage of brass instrumentation?
Cidjian: Yes, we actually were.
Jack: So that was really gonna happen??
Cidjian: Yea, our relationship with Damon is at one point he was one of the bros. We have a thing where we just wait to be called, he would hit us up and we ready. We have stuff we will always suggest, like we are working with him right now on the record after the one we are quickly releasing (in March 2020). He’s done some guitar on a track for us recently. We just haven’t figured it out how to put it together for release yet. We still have our on going musical relationship. It’s a two way street.
Jack: That’s really cool! Thank you for telling me all that. That’s a lot of mind blowing information right there. Now you guys not only guested, but were on the bill at Gorillaz second Demon Dayz Festival in Los Angeles in 2018. What was that experience like?
Cidjian: It was dope. A lot of the people in the band, Gorillaz, hadn’t been to Cali. The Pharcyde were on their home-grounds, so they were hosting everybody. A lot of us hadn’t seen each other in a while. It was almost like a reunion concert. We didn’t even need to rehearse or sound check. We just kinda talked about the “Plastic Beach” tour.
Jack: Was it strange to perform Sweepstakes without Yasiin Bey? Was he planned to be there, or did Damon just want to do Sweepstakes because you all were there?
Cidjian: Mos was meant to be there, he was having trouble getting into the US cause of South African visa issues. Mos actually didn’t go on the actual “Plastic Beach” tour with us, the schedules didn’t align. MF DOOM filled in for him at one point, as did Bootie Brown.
Jack: I didn’t know that was the reason DOOM was there!
Cidjian: Yea that was crazy! He was a totally different dude from what I expected, a real quiet cat.
Jack: How often do you guys make music? What do you guys do in your free time?
Cidjian: Well in our free time, a lot of us are fathers. We have this duality of tour life and home life, like Clark Kent and Superman. Two totally different existences. Since we built up the label, we have everybody’s personal projects coming this year. So we are working on our own projects when we aren’t working together. The best stuff becomes Hypnotic Brass tunes.
Jack: So you’re working on a solo album?
Cidjian: Yup, all of us are. Similar to what Wu Tang was doing, we have solo records under the same label and then we all come together.
Jack: Since there are so many of you guys in the group, do you guys ever have any big arguments while working in the studio or writing songs?
Cidjian: All the time man. We’re brothers, musically we encourage it though. It encourages everyone to have a voice. We fight over the little things, always have since we were kids. We had a wrestling match in the studio with Damon. He had to walk out. Him and Yasiin are quiet types they can’t handle negative energy. Different vibes, good ones though.
Jack: So what’s the future plans for HBE?
Cidjian: We about to release our new record (“The Bad Boys Of Jazz” in March 2020). We about to release a collaboration with Snoop as a single this summer. We are working on stuff with Black Star, Yasiin and Talib Kweli. I didn’t mention this, but we’re their live band when it’s more than just a DJ. We got something coming with Erykah Badu, Macy Gray. This is a year of features for Hypnotic. Our new record coming this spring, we are doing DJ remixes for that all year. We got ones with Twilite Tone and Maseo.
Jack: That’s funny cause Twilite Tone produced one of the recent Gorillaz records, “Humanz”.
Cidjian: Yea, that was a Chicago based record. That’s why Damon asked him to do it, to give it that Chicago soul house party vibe.
Jack: Any plans to work with Gorillaz again in the future?
Cidjian: Yea we plan on being on, and once again of course we serve at the behest, but we are definitely are gonna be doing something with a few of the members, and as well on (Gorillaz’) next record.
Jack: Are you allowed to say anything or no?
Cidjian: No, a lot of stuff is just in the works right now. They space out how they work on records. It will be a while before the record comes out. Damon always puts out this and that of stuff out of his crates, but for the official Gorillaz record, it will be a little while. It’s time to talk about that. But yea, Hypnotic will be on there, we should be shining full circle on this next one. Maybe a little writing on there as well.
Jack: I know there’s a rumor going around that some of the new record might have ideas incorporated from “Plastic Beach”, is that true?
Cidjian: Not that I’m aware, but that doesn’t surprise me. Damon’s got crates of stuff, and he’s always reusing ideas just like every artist.
Jack: For those of our readers who aren’t familiar with your work outside of Gorillaz, what do you wish to tell them? Any specific songs or highlights you want to share? I know you guys have a new record coming out soon, “The Bad Boys Of Jazz”. What do you want the world to know about THE HYPNOTIC BRASS ENSEMBLE?
Cidjian: I’m glad you asked me that, any reason you might not know about us because we’re independent, but we have worked with (almost) every big artist. Hypnotic founded the brass movement. New Orleans brass has always been on, but our work with playing all over the world and splicing genres. We spread the brass culture cause we are horn players. That’s what we believe in. We want every performer to want horns on their record or at their concert. We want every audience member to want horns on stage. We are ambassadors of the brass. We gotta new record coming out featuring songs we been playing all over the world. The name came from a nickname that artists like The Roots, Wu Tang, and Gorillaz would give us on tours, “The Bad Boys Of Jazz”. We’re the young, rowdy guys but when the show goes and starts… the horns… the music… is still there. Hypnotic Brass Ensemble. You may not know the name, but you’ve heard the music.
Jack: Well thank you so much for talking to us! This means a lot to me and will mean a lot to our readers!
Cidjian: No problem! Be on the look out for the new Gorillaz, our record and many more!
HBE’s new album “The Bad Boys Of Jazz” is coming out soon and is available for pre-order! Check hypnoticbrassensemble.com for more news and updates.