HLLLYH - URUBURU (2025)

The album is called URUBURU, and the original plan was for it to be a new Mae Shi record. So let’s start with the Mae Shi.

The Mae Shi were born in Los Angeles in 2002. They were part of the punkish, arty, do-it-yourself scene centered around The Smell, the city’s oldest all-ages experimental art venue. Over a seven-year period, the Mae Shi played more than 300 shows, from house parties in Echo Park and Olympia to Primavera Sound and Pitchfork Fest, and released several albums and singles.

What made the Mae Shi stand out? Well, for one, weaponized ADHD. Healthy, well-balanced people do not make music that sounds like this. Healthy people do not bleed out of their mouth for their art. The Mae Shi weren’t big on musical labels, but they never had a big problem with being called “spazz rock.”

Second, few bands “art schooled” as hard as the Mae Shi did. Only half the band actually went to art school, but every member wanted to. Every song title, show poster, band photo, and PR gimmick was scrutinized and labored over. This sometimes meant a self-sabotaging commitment to experimentation – What if a song had five different endings? What if the audience played the final song of the show? But it always meant trying to do something that hadn’t been done before, which is hard when you are riding a 60-year-old wave (rock and roll music) that crested decades ago. The band found spiritual kinship in earlier bands from “Weird Los Angeles” – Question Mark and The Mysterians, Captain Beefheart, Van Dyke Parks, Minutemen (but also Firehose, let’s be real here), Devo, Sparks, Harvey Sid Fisher. They also made friends with the strangest bands they could find, like Boston’s Fat Day (who played musical helmets and trampolines), Liverpool’s a.P.A.t.T. (who played smooth jazz AND grindcore), and Riverside, California’s Quem Quaeritis (who performed in a tent).

Third, the band had a moth-like fixation with bright colors and sounds. On stage, they often wore white and dayglo colors on stage. And while they loved and name-dropped Erik Satie and John Zorn, they were just as likely to listen to Andrew WK, Queen, Kelly Clarkson, and Hall & Oates in the van. Their love of pop music always found a way to bubble to the surface.

Finally, Mae Shi songs addressed topics like evolution, biblical violence, monsters, parties, death, and the end of the world. If the band was going to write a love song, it was going to be about love with a prehistoric shark (“Megamouth 2”). If it was going to write an anti-war song, it would be from the point of view of a dolphin (“Takoma the Dolphin is AWOL”).

In 2008, after several releases on Kill Rock Stars/5RC, the band released HLLLYH, a concept album about humanity, god, and the end of the world, on Moshi Moshi in the UK and Team Shi in the US. People liked HLLLYH quite a bit.

Then, in 2009, just as people were starting to notice, the Mae Shi went dark. In the spirit of the Velvet Underground and Menudo, the band ended its run with a lineup featuring no original members (which, like the Doug Yule VU, totally slayed). Although they would reunite over the coming years for one-off shows, HLLLYH became their final recorded statement.

So that’s the Mae Shi. What’s HLLLYH the band?

In 2022, founding member Tim Byron set out to “get the band back together” and crisscrossed California, pitching the other former members of the Mae Shi on one final album. This new album would be built from spastic drums, guitars, hoots, hollers, claps, and candy-coated synths, like the band’s previous records. It would draw from 20th century mysticism (Gurdjieff, Crowley, McPherson, McKenna) and trace a hero’s journey from the spirit world and back. Like HLLLYH, it would be arty, poppy, big, ponderous, and cheap.

Tim’s call to action was answered. Decades-old hard drives spun to life. Tim unearthed half-written Mae Shi songs and began sketching out dozens of new songs using the Mae Shi palette. Jeff Byron signed on as de facto producer and engineer, as well as singer and guitarist. Ezra Buchla, who had spent the last two decades using voice, viola, and software to explore new sounds and ideas, agreed to play the role of punk singer once again. Brad Breeck offered vocals, opinions, and moral support. Corey Fogel showed up at Jeff’s house with a car full of drums, wrenches, and a timpani.

The product of these efforts is URUBURU, an end-of-the-world story written on a mobius strip. Built from bright colors and loud sounds, it is a puzzle to be solved, written in English, Morse code, and machine language. It tells several interconnected stories of punk house party disasters (“Flexit, Tagger,” “Dead Clade”), young monsters in love (“Evolver,” “Black Rainbows”), space travel gone wrong (“In Between,” “Trapped in the Song”), adventures in other dimensions (“Yellow Brick Wall,” “Back From the Spirit World”), showdowns with malevolent forces (“S.O.S.O.S.O.S”), and the never ending quest for meaning (“Endless High Five,” “I’m Glad You’re Alive”). Written in a circle, it starts (“Uru Buru”) where it ends (“Dead Clade”).

While the original plan was for URUBURU to be the final Mae Shi record, it felt more like the first chapter of something new than the final chapter of the Mae Shi. Indeed, to Tim, it began to feel like the first part of a trilogy.

So HLLLYH the band was born, making URUBURU both a beginning and an end. In true Mae Shi fashion, HLLLYH continues to rapidly mutate. In 2024, three new members joined the cause: Dan Chao, James Baker, and Burt Hashiguchi, and on January 18, 2025, HLLLYH played its first show, with Brainiac, at Bottom of the Hill in San Francisco.