Most Haunted: Illum Sphere's ghostly electronics

Despite recently signing to Ninja Tune and being fêted by critics and DJs alike as one of the UK’s most promising up and coming artists, Ryan Hunn – aka Illum Sphere – is anything but arrogant. “I felt out of my depth,” he says, describing the lengthy process of recording his debut album, Ghosts of Then and Now, and explaining with refreshing candour the difficulties that come with the switch from producing mostly singles to a longer format. “It’s been four and a half years since my first record, quite a long time. A lot of people seem to do a couple of releases and then they’ve got an album ready.”

Fortunately, Ninja Tune were more than sympathetic to Hunn’s pace, and his flair for producing haunting, otherworldly tracks that make a virtue of their not exactly being ‘club friendly’ has come up trumps – and while the recording process was painful at times, he hasn’t been put off by the experience. “I already feel like I can make another one, in a kind of focused way,” he says.

"I like endings not being what you think they should be" – Ryan Hunn

Starting out with a dubstep-tinged style, Hunn’s music has evolved along with the frantic pace of UK bass culture, drawing influence from LA label Brainfeeder’s futuristic beat-freakery and, more recently, Detroit techno. Throughout, however, he has remained fiercely original, eclectic and, as more than one critic has labelled him, ‘adventurous’ – a description that, with typical self-deprecation, he puts down to his technical shortcomings. “I don’t think I’m particularly good at making a certain genre of music,” he admits. “That’s a totally different art form.” 

Renowned for DJ sets that flit effortlessly from Turkish rock to 80s boogie by way of punishing grime instrumentals, Hunn’s music is equally diverse, often shifting from dark, uneasy synth workouts to uplifting, psychedelic codas, as on the album’s lead single Sleeprunner. It soon becomes apparent that the true reason for this anything-goes approach is his restless imagination, rather than amateurism. He cites cult hip hop producer Dabrye’s album Two/Three as a chief influence. “It was the first electronic album that I really attached myself to,” he recalls. “I remember hearing it and thinking it was like nothing I’d ever heard before. I think that it, in one sense, broke a lot rules. It was essentially a hip-hop album but there were so many things that would happen like once in a track. I think it was the first album that gave my brain imagery. That might have a massive influence on how I make stuff.”

What with the noirish, atmospheric motifs used throughout Ghosts of Then and Now and its sci-fi track titles like Lights Out / In Shinjuku, there is a strikingly visual quality to Hunn’s music. Have any films had an influence on the record? “There isn’t one that I could pick out as being a direct inspiration,” he considers, “But I guess I quite like setting a mood, or little jolts, or endings not being what you think they should be. So there’s definitely a cinematic influence in there somewhere.” Other influences include releases on Finders Keepers, the legendary archival label that puts out trippy lost records from around Europe and the Middle-East – though Hunn protests that his muse is anything but acid. “I’m not a heavy drug user. I’m pretty boring actually! A lot of the times when I make music it’s in a certain mind frame; you push yourself to make music that’s weirder than you think it is.”

A background in more guitar-based music may have provoked Hunn’s inclination for the idiosyncratic – which is matched by an admirable tendency to forgo samples in favour of more organic sounds, a theme that extends to his unusual use of interfaces. Much of the album is dominated by live instruments, including Hunn’s self-penned bass guitar licks, Shigeto’s drumming and a rather unlikely collaboration on penultimate track Near the End. “There’s a keys solo on it, done by my flatmate’s dad; he’s a music teacher. He actually did it on his dinner break and sent the piano roll back as a MIDI file. It sounds like it’s been recorded. I suppose that’s cheating a bit really!” he laughs.

Hunn indicates that we’ll be hearing a lot more of these live-sounding arrangements in his future releases. “I wanna do a lot more genre-fied stuff,” he reveals, “whether it’s under other names or whatever, some stuff being purely instruments, some analogue stuff.” A number of successful remixes for acts such as The Invisible, MONEY and, most notably, Radiohead have given him an audience of indie kids who wouldn’t otherwise have come across his music, and he suggests that he’d like to move into producing for bands “if the right thing came along.”

The producer's other duty of running clubnight Hoya:Hoya with co-founder Jonny Dub has enabled him to construct a tight-knit crew, playing, promoting and remixing each other’s records. Conceived of as a monthly session with secret guests, but for the price of a luxury kebab, the night is acclaimed as one of the best in the UK, due in no small part to its residents’ commitment to “dropping odd numbers.” The motto of “having a really good party but never relying on the buzz tunes that you would hear elsewhere” is directly inherited from

Hunn’s favourite DJ and fellow resident Jon K’s former night Eyes Down. Now approaching their sixth anniversary, the Hoya team are enjoying a bit of a purple patch, what with Éclair Fifi joining the BBC’s ‘In New DJs We Trust’ roster, Krystal Klear working with Nile Rodgers, and Lone putting out a critically acclaimed album. “I think it’s better now musically than it’s ever been,” Hunn agrees. “A lot of us are hitting a point where we have to make career changes. In terms of my DJing, there was a time when the adventurous side of it came from being a bit scatty, almost trying too much really. But in the last six months or year it’s come to be noticeably more refined and mature. You tend not to worry, you tend to spend a bit less time noticing what you’re not really into.”

While the Hoya crew have been making waves around the country and abroad, Hunn is keen to point out that the night hasn’t lost its identity. “It’s definitely changed, but it’s not changed to fit a trend,” he stresses. “We haven’t booked a lot of people who've been very trendy, there've been people who have been interested in playing and we’ve not really seen them being the right fit.” With this in mind, 2014 will see the night make a number of changes to its secret guest line-ups. “We’re going to run a series of specific events that are more to do with where it came from and the people who inspired us, instead of just booking guys who we know can work as secret guests.” The same discerning attitude applies to releases on the Hoya label: “We don’t like to release for the sake of the release, I’d much rather wait for the right thing.”

And what next from Hunn after the album drops? Apparently a tour is in the works, along with more fresh material – “I’ll probably do an EP as Illum Sphere and maybe some music under a few other names.” With a stunning record that is sure to be on the lips of many critics this month, and with his crew in extremely rude health, 2014 is shaping up quite nicely for Hunn. Whisper it, but he may even have a few reasons to be confident this year.