Mix of the Week 29/5: Will Hayford - Hour of Power
There is not much information to discern about Will Hayford from his Soundcloud page. With no links to a Facebook page or even a hometown, the only thing that is certain is that he is a young but talented DJ. This is evident from the few mixes available on his page. The latest, titled ‘Hour of Power’, is not only exceptional by his own standards, but also the rest of Soundcloud.
Hayford’s ’Hour of Power’ is a one hour mix that fuses minimal bass music with hard techno beats. Offering a range of bootlegs from established pop, Hayford puts some refreshing spins on some surprising tracks. The production is clean, using his minimalist background to create tight layers and refine simple beats. The hard techno influence comes in through the over the top and highly entertaining drops that creep into songs. There is a pulsing energy that keeps the listener moving.
An example of how these elements come together is at around the fifteen-minute mark. A thumping kick blasts the sub bass over a cleanly cut version of James Hetfield’s vocals in ‘Enter Sandman’ by Metallica. The heavily distorted guitar reverberates from the background into the foreground and back out again, while a subtle electronic trill repeats. This electronic trill grows more and more complex, with Hayford drawing more out from the low end, before it kicks into the bassline of Stevie Nicks’ ‘Edge of Seventeen’. The infamous line, “just like a one winged dove”, echoes over the mix, signalling the rest of the layers to come in like the starting pistol of a 100m race. All of this occurs within the space of five minutes and is a great example of how tight, minimalist production enables Hayford to combine the energy of hard techno with sampled pop songs. However, that is not to say there isn’t some straight original beats. Entire sequences are based around slowing building different layers over the space of minutes, only to cheekily transition into another sample. These moments prove that Hayford is nothing short of competent as a DJ.
