The music on Evergreen Motel, the new album by Elohyek, is fascinating. It blends industrial percussion, indie-rock guitars and goth atmosphere, and each of the 13 tracks sounds different than the one before it.
The group (pronounced El-low-Yek) is more of a loose collective than a full-fledged band, blending in members from around the U.S. and Britain. At the center of Elohyek’s sound is Charleston musician Matthew “Maku” Hancock, a drummer, guitarist and synth player.
“It really started as a side project,” Hancock said. “I play in another band, and we all do writing for that, but a lot of the stuff that I was writing just didn’t really fit with that group. So I had a bunch of stuff saved up over the years and I just had this desire to record it.”
Evergreen Motel is surprisingly unified in its dark atmospheric, rhythmic complexity weaved with yearning vocal melodies — think Tool or A Perfect Circle meets Nine Inch Nails with a dash of Godspeed You! Black Emperor.
The first Elohyek album came out last year, a collection of haunting instrumentals called Phantom Limbs. The new album is the work of a group of musicians as opposed to a solo project.
“After I did [Phantom Limbs], I had all these other songs that had lyrics,” Hancock said. “I had some other people who were interested in doing some collaborations. I had a couple of the guys who I play in another band with and a couple of people I met online [who] all wanted to collab on some stuff. So it kind of morphed into a bit of a collective.”
Ultimately, seven people played or sang on Evergreen Motel, with Hancock acting as a sort of musical director.
“I would set the guidelines for the soundscape,” he said, “and then we would just explore the content musically.”
He credits divergent musical influences for helping shape Evergreen Motel.
“So on this album in particular, I was really getting into Portishead a lot. And I’m a huge Nine Inch Nails fan. Trent Reznor is probably my biggest musical inspiration. So I see this as my Nine Inch Nails where Trent writes most of the music, and then when they play live, they have the live band.”
Hancock is hopeful that some live performances are on the horizon for Elohyek as well.
“I think the main thing is just going out there and having fun,” he said. “We don’t absolutely have to play live because we have fun writing the music, and we have fun doing the recording and everybody’s got their day jobs as well. But obviously, I would say a good portion of making music is performing the music. So that’s definitely in the cards.”
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