Tim Byron wanted to get The Mae Shi back together. It had been about 20 years since the synthpunk band formed in Los Angeles and a decade since the original members reunited for a one-off show at Pehrspace. “It was the cliche of we’re getting the band back together,” he says on a recent video call. And, despite the fact that three of the members— Byron, as well as his brother Jeff Byron and Ezra Buchla— now live in the Bay Area while Brad Breeck and Corey Fogel are in L.A., he was able to do that. They recorded what was intended to be a new album from their old band. “But, at the end of the day,” Byron says, “it was different enough where we decided to give it a different name and have a separate identity from The Mae Shi.” The band morphed into HLLLYH and includes new members Dan Chao, James Baker and Burt Hashiguchi. Debut album Uruburuis out on June 27.
HLLLYH played their first show, opening for Brainiac at Bottom of the Hill in San Francisco, last January. Throughout this past spring, they’ve released three singles, “Dead Clade,” “Uru Buru” and “Flex It, Tagger,” with a cover song B-side included with each release. Byron is right, the music is different enough from what they did in the ‘00s to warrant a different band name. But, the energy of The Mae Shi is still there.
In the midst of the ‘00s, The Mae Shi became of the breakout stars of the city’s DIY show circuit, playing The Smell and Sean Carnage’s Monday Nights in L.A. while also booking tours and festival dates. Their final album, HLLLYH, landed in the top 20 of Pitchfork’s Best of 2008 list. Today, a vinyl copy will cost you a pretty penny on Discogs.
If you have time, listen to HLLLYH the album before diving into HLLLYH the band. The Mae Shi’s swan song encapsulates the vibe of Bush-era Los Angeles. It’s punky, noise-rock made with electronic gadgets that sound as if they were pulled from the pages of a 1980s toy catalog. Right in the middle of the album is the epic “Kingdom Come,” which starts off as a house track and then transforms into something much stranger. Listen to this album and you’ll get an idea of what it was like to live in an L.A. with cheap(er) rents and parking, where you could easily hop from DIY shows to warehouse parties and end waiting in line at the (now long-gone) TV Cafe or a taco truck an hour or two before normal people get breakfast. And, when you pay attention to the lyrics, you’ll realize that the themes are heavier than one might have suspected for the era now known as “indie sleaze.”
“As a band, we started right after 9/11, when everyone was trying to justify this war with Iraq so there was all this talk about militant Islam and stuff that’s in the Koran and we were looking at the Bible and were like, there’s crazy stuff in this book too,” says Byron. Between the members of the band, some grew up without religion and others were raised with it. “HlllYH was the opportunity to take all those aspects and really make a theme record about Christianity,” says Byron.
That aspect isn’t necessarily present with HLLLYH, the band. “I feel like we had already done that, so there wasn’t a reason to do that again,” says Byron. “The new songs, they still use a lot of the same source material and follow some of the same rules. Like, there are not a lot of love songs on the record and, if there are, they’re about monsters. A lot of the songs are about dark forces and getting trapped in loops and stuff like that.”
One instrument that remains a favorite is the Suzuki Omnichord. “It’s like a kidney bean shaped instrument. Back in the 2000s, you could find it at thrift stores for $15,” Byron explains. “Every single member of the band has an Omnichord because it’s such a cool sounding instrument.”
Now, their Omnichords are middle-aged with buttons that don’t work, but, Byron says, “We still have them and we still use them and they have a real cool sound to them. This is the one instrument that we keep coming back to.”
With 15 songs, Uruburu is a fairly long album by today’s standards, but HLLLYH can hold listeners’ attention with vivid lyrics that blur the edge of fantasy and reality. On Uruburu, there are references to the DIY scene in songs like “Dead Clade” (“We spilled out onto the street/From the bridge to the reservoir”), but it’s not an album stuck in the past. In fact, “Flex It, Tagger” (“flex the tags/burn the messages/let the men in black try to control this feeling”) could read like 2025 or 2005, take your pick. There’s a pop sensibility to HLLLYH that’s more pronounced than there was with The Mae Shi, particularly on “Uru Buru” and “Flex It, Tagger,” as well as a few more mellow moments, like “Trapped in the Song” and the album’s closer, “I’m Glad You’re Alive,” a cliffhanger of a song that will leave you wondering when the second HLLLYH album will be released.
As for shows, Byron says that playing outside of California is a goal, but, for now, their gigs are in-state. They will be playing a 21+ show Permanent Records Roadhouse in Los Angeles on Friday, August 8 and tickets are available now. Tickets are also available for their all ages show at The Smell on Saturday, August 9.
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Liz O. is an L.A.-based writer and DJ. Read her recently published work and check out her upcoming gigs or listen to the latest Beatique Mix. Follow on Instagram or Bluesky for more updates.
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