Hot Press meets Egyptian Hip Hop

“We probably have matured, but I don’t think in a way that everyone thinks we have. I think everyone thinks we made an EP and that after that we started listening to Brian Eno and suddenly we wanted to sound different.”

It may be a gloomy, miserable English winter morn, and Alex Hewett is struggling with a dose of the flu, but the softly-spoken Egyptian Hip Hop frontman is quick to pour water over any suggestions that his band are going through somewhat of a second coming – if that term can be used for a group so young.
Following the release of their debut EP Some Reptiles Grew Wings, which Scottish electronic wiz-kid Hudson Mohawke produced, the Mancunians were the darlings of the UK media. They sounded great, looked the part, and by all accounts were set to follow in the footsteps of bands like Klaxons and Foals, clocking up hours of radio-play along the way.
“Well. it wasn’t so much that it didn’t happen as us taking a while to do it,” suggests Hewett. “We were making sure that we explored enough avenues, because we were still trying to work out what exactly what we wanted to sound like.”
Although they were only 17 or 18 at the time. buzz and hype wait for no band, and the combination of an impatient label (who were also in the midst of hiring and firing), resulted in EHH being dropped. Given their tender years at the time, presumably that was a tough time for the group?
“Not majorly, no,” insists Hewett. “We knew we could work through it.”
And work through it they did, ending up at indie powerhouse R&S soon after.
“The same person who signed us to our first record contract was working there, so it made sense to carry on collaborating with our A&R man.”
The cutting-edge label currently boast Vondelpark, Pariah and James Blake among their ranks, but EHH already feel at home there.
“There’s a lot of cool stuff they put out so it’s nice to be a little part of that heritage. It’s cool. There are no rules or anything like that. We’re allowed to just do what we do.”
Having found their feet at R&S, EHH released their debut album Good Don’t Sleep in October of 2012.
“It’s not the weirdest music,” Hewett ponders. “We like to have a lot of fun with sound and what you can do with that.”
Indeed that sense of enjoyment is splashed all over the record. Opener ‘Tobago’ pairs looped guitars with harmonised vocals, while singles ‘SYH’ and ‘Yoro Diallo’ carry a sense of urgency that wouldn’t be out of place on a Foals record.
“We have the other side too, which is sort of slower and more pensive and murkier, and that’s just us sitting back and relaxing in a way.” Hewitt is keen to point out. “You can enjoy it however you want, but it’s nice to have that on the record, rather than just one tone.”
There are no hard and fast rules for growing up in the music business, something that Hewett knows only too well. Now in their 20s, EHH seem to have a firm grasp on their sound. Does Alex have any regrets about the journey?
“A little bit. I mean, it’s hard to imagine the ifs and buts because – even though it was quite stupid at times – all these little things kind of added up to things that we got offered and got to do. And how we progressed is kind of all down to that. Obviously things could have been a lot smoother, but then also maybe they might not have been.”

Good Don’t Sleep is out now. Egyptian Hip Hop play the Grand Social, Dublin on February 28.