Hyd – Hold Onto Me Infinity
Multidisciplinary artist Hyd (Hayden Dunham) releases Hold Onto Me Infinity via Cascine.
Zooming between the intimate and the infinite Hold Onto Me Infinity is a powerful testament to music’s ability to cross timelines, physical thresholds, and lifespans, while dancing in between this physical world, and the one beyond.
Dunham emerged with a powerful record that channels grief into a study of how love persists beyond the limits of flesh—and through a process of transmutation can be alchemized into heat, rhythm, vapor, and light. The album includes collaborations with Sophie, Benny Long, Saint Patrick, Finn Keane, Tjorvi, Marcus Andersson, Michael Bailey-Gates and Bobbi Salvör Menuez.
Focus track “Makeover,” first recorded in 2016, features a recording of Sophie’s voice and serves as a reminder that music can surpass bodies, and in the spirit of eternal return, those we love have chances to come back again.
Much of Hold Onto Me Infinity was recorded in Iceland, where Dunham was researching lithium and volcanic magma as materials that are volatile and light, yet capable of holding immense energy. Fire recurs as a central metaphor of transformation through its potential to catalyze change and dematerialization. The album closes with the sound of a match striking, referencing a ritual Hayden performed after Sophie and their brothers’ death: burning bouquets left from friends at their studio in order to watch the flowers change forms, their particles drifting up to the heavens.
With Hold Onto Me Infinity there is a physicality reflected in the album’s drum-forward sonic palette, where the vibrations are designed to be felt in the listeners’ bodies as much as they are heard. The album cover, shot by Michael Bailey Gates, reflects this liminal blur between the existential and elemental. Made without artificial effects, it uses a glass sculpture made by Dunham, pyrotechnics, mirror reflections, and a sunset poking through a pierced window to create a portal within the image that holds both this physical reality and another world. This analog approach was a necessity that emerged out of Dunham’s intermittent loss of vision over the past seven years, which made them extremely sensitive to artificial light. This condition continues to have profound impacts on their senses: when their sight receded, other (extra)-sensory skills emerged; when it returned, they felt extra-embodied in their body and the juiciness of being.
Hyd is gearing up to head on a North American tour this May with dates across Austin, NY, Philadelphia, Chicago, Los Angeles, Portland, Atlanta, Washington D.C.,Montreal and Ottawa. The tour will continue on to Europe in October with dates across London, Paris, Berlin and Copenhagen.
Hyd also recently celebrated the opening of their latest solo art show at Company Gallery in NY titled Never Is Over. Hayden Dunham’s third solo exhibition stages the cosmological tendency towards reconnection through the artist’s most recent explorations in sculpture, video, and sound. The exhibition will be running through June 13th.
Hold Onto Me Infinity is the follow up album to Hayden’s celebrated debut CLEARING. Informed by their wider artistic practice, Hyd’s music is the result of interior research, community dialogues and material exploration creating an immense ecosystem. Dunham’s work as a fine artist has been exhibited at museums including MoMA PS1 and the New Museum.
Tour Dates:
5/21 – Austin, TX @ Radio / East
5/23 – New York, NY @ Night Club 101
5/24 – Philadelphia, PA @ Nikki Lopez
5/28 – Chicago, IL @ Sleeping Village
5/30 – Los Angeles, CA @ The Echo
6/06 – Montreal, QC @ Futurs Antérieurs
6/13 – Ottawa, ON @ Arts Court – Pique
6/17 – Atlanta, GE @ Alter
6/19 – Washington D.C. @ The Atlantis
7/30 – Portland, OR @ Barn Radio
10/19 – London, UK @ The Institute of Contemporary Arts
10/21 – Paris, France @ Le Hasard Ludique
10/26 – Berlin, Germany @ PrivatClub
10/27 – Denmark, Copenhagen @ Beta
#hyd.earth