“I would like to create the 0.1-second sound which condenses all emotions in the universe. When I listen to it, maybe my mind and existence itself will collapse.”
Out of Tune: The Lost Genius of UK producer Beaumont Hannant
Looking back at an unsung hero from Warp Records’ seminal Artificial Intelligence compilation series.
Once mentioned alongside contemporaries Aphex Twin, Autechre, Luke Vibert, and Mike Paradinas, Yorkshire-based producer Beaumont Hannant completely disappeared from the musical world in 1998, just five years after the release of his acclaimed debut EP Tastes And Textures (Volume One) on General Production Recordings (GPR). Within that short period of time, Hannant established himself as one of the most groundbreaking and influential producers of his generation (he was named one of “The Faces of ’94” by Select magazine) who crafted deeply layered and textural electronic compositions within the worlds of ambient techno, IDM, trip-hop, and house. Now immensely overlooked amongst his peers, Hannant released three full-length albums, various singles, remixes (including three of Björk’s “Hyperballad”), and collaborations, which are all ripe for rediscovery from a new generation of listeners that are now diving in to the expanded worlds of Richard D. James, Warp Records, and beyond.
Once called “the great white hope of British techno” by Andrew Weatherall, Hannant is probably most known today for his appearance on Warp Records’ seminal compilation Artificial Intelligence alongside Autechre, Speedy J, Higher Intelligence Society, Richard H. Kirk, Seefeel, and others. The series famously included the tagline “electronic listening music from Warp,” and birthed the genre that would later become (for better or worse) known as intelligent dance music, or IDM.
Writer Oli Warwick describes the scene Hannant was a part of in his book Untold Story of London Techno 1989-1997: “While house music took hold rapidly in the UK, an original techno sound germinated slowly. But, for a few years in the early ’90s, there was a hive of activity around a network of artists and labels in London that married haunting sci-fi romanticism in the Motor City tradition with a strange, angular funk that could not have come from anywhere else. Balanced neatly between club-centric sounds and home listening fare, this music presents a cohesive vision, even if – at times – the reality felt fractious or solitary for those involved.”
A perfect introduction to the intricate sound world of Beaumont Hannant, “Utaba” is a timeless chill-out room track featuring a gorgeous self-oscillating Roland Jupiter-4 melody, broken techno beat, and brief but interesting use of guitar harmonics, which hints at his later indie pop and trip-hop era. The way the track seems to breathe while being completely synthetic and futuristic is classic Hannant.
Hannant’s three full-length albums are considered (within certain circles) landmarks of IDM/ambient techno. In particular, Hannant’s 1994 double-length Texturology is a masterpiece that lands “somewhere between LFO’s glacial scifi futurology, Autechre’s experimentalism and Aphex Twin’s otherworldliness, though really it occupies its own dreamy space” (according to one discogs user). Interestingly, there seems to be two versions of Texturology with entirely different tracks. They’re both great…
Perhaps a part of his mystique, Hannant was notoriously against the press, rarely did interviews and was known to call journalists “gutless pieces of shit.” Notably, UK music publication Melody Maker featured a full-page dedicated to Hannant after he called out the British music press in the liner notes of his third album Sculptured:
“I used to be of fair temperament, but being part of the music industry has made me aggressive toward the lethargic nature of the business…to declare that talent is effort and work, or even that an artist is trying, seems to be too far hard a job. Within this album is the good the bad the crap and the indifferent. Let’s see which of you can distinguish the good from the bad. Or have you been telling stories so long you’ve forgotten how to communicate in an apt and straightforward manner?”
In his later years, Hannant would shift his focus to collaborations and produce some of his best work with his engineer and frequent collaborator Richard Brown along with American alternative rock singer Lida Husik. The beginnings of this shift are also noted in the liner notes of Sculptured, which featured vocal contributions from Husik:
“If you are familiar with my work this album may seem slightly odd or out of context but every now and then I feel the need to step away from the norm. I forsee the rest of my recording career being plagued by minor distractions which will eventually, I hope, lead to something better. I want you to all hear my failings and well as my successful compositions so you will have a true representation of my work.”
1994’s Evening at the Grange is perhaps our favorite Hannant release. Here, he pulls back his usual dark, ambient techno sound in favor of a more minimal and nearly beatless, melody-driven approach which provides the perfect foundation for Husik’s layers of dusky vocals and dreamy songwriting. Without the drum machines, Hannant’s production sounds even more ahead of its time. Just listen to “Gregory Peck,” named after the famed American actor who played Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird, which features little more than a digital keyboard part that Hannant somehow keeps flowing and interesting through subtle delay effects and arpeggiation.
Husik on working with Hannant and engineer Richard Brown: “The process was very smooth, very easy. I’d lay down the basic tracks with them – guitar, bass, keyboards – then I took the mixes home to where I was staying and wrote the vocals over them. Then when the vocals were done they’d mix everything. I wasn’t there for the mixes. They treated everything and added percussive elements but they stayed pretty much very true to what we had done.”
Hannant’s work with Husik as Husikesque would receive praise from Icelandic superstar Björk. Three incredibly varied remixes of Björk’s seminal track “Hyperballad” would come out shortly after in 1995 under the name Outcast, a new collaborative project with Hannant’s longtime engineer Richard Brown. Outcast would release their lone album Out of Tune in 1996 with vocal contributions from Kirsty Yates, 1/2 of the post-rock duo Insides who released that incredible and also highly underrated album Euphoria on 4AD sub-label Guernica in 1993.
Out of Tune has become something of a lost trip-hop cult classic over the years and incredibly timely with the recent trip-hop and downtempo resurgence. The album certainly isn’t without its flaws, but tracks like the brooding downtempo “Choice,” darkly euphoric techno “Life and Breath,” the heavy but dreamy “Nothing’s Changed,” and perfect instrumental trip-hop of “Out of Tune” remain high points of Hannant’s short-lived recording career.
In a rare interview featured in the the companion booklet to the 1997 compilation Trance Europe Express 5, Hannant reflects on his move to collaborations. The note points to an artist who was deeply critical of his own output and the state of the music industry.
“At times, I tried to really get into what I was doing, analyse everything, and it just failed,” he says. “You have to take a step back and start writing afresh. If you analyse everything you go up your own arse. Try to polish everything and you start to lose the plot. Working with someone else stops you going that bit too far… People claim they’re up for anything, but they’ve got preconceptions of what being far out and wacky is all about,” he says. “Eclectic is about hearing all these different types of music under one roof and if you’ve got a preconception about it already then it’s going to be broken.”
To this day, no one seems to know the full truth of what happened to Hannant, and why he so suddenly and completely vanished from the public eye. An essential retrospective on Hannant titled “Mind Colours – the story of Beaumont Hannant” was published in 2019 on the now defunct Ambient Music Guide, which founder Mike G shut down in 2022 in a similar complete break from music. Luckily, an archive of the article can be viewed here. This piece heavily references Mike G’s retrospective and we highly recommend checking that out for further (and deeper) reading. Mike G’s tribute mix is also still available to listen to on Mixcloud.
You can also visit Kompaktiste for scans of all Beaumont Hannant’s releases: https://www.kompaktkiste.de/hannant.htm
Below, a few more of our favorite Beaumont Hannant tracks, including some remixes.