Harry Hook Is Real is gearing up to release his third, solo studio album this May and in the process of doing so is sharing a single and accompanying music video this Friday February 17. The single’s title is Cocaine Hippos.
Upon initially seeing the title, one cannot ignore it – an approach strategically employed by Harry. But the hippos that were once introduced to South America by Pablo Escobar, and have now become naturalised to their environment, may not be widely known information.
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“Escobar, at the height of his powers, wanted to have an African safari on his property in Colombia,” Harry says. “He ordered three hippos from Africa, probably paid for in cash, and he had them on his property. They took to the climate and landscape naturally and now there is about 150 or so naturalized hippos in Colombia throughout the river systems.”
So why the unlikely inspiration?
“It all comes down to a conversation I had up on the Gold Coast on a family holiday,” says Harry. “There was this guy that came into the sauna I was in, fully tatted up, really solid in his build, kind of like a professional wrestler looking dude. I asked him what he did, and he was really frank. He was a Comanchero guy who is involved in the cocaine importation business.”
Harry’s influences remain rather unique. Irrespective of whether you love or loathe his new single, Harry Hook Is Real is a devotee to story-telling.
“People will either connect with it or hate it,” says Harry. “Either way I want to make something you can’t ignore, that is my philosophy. I spent a lot of time and effort crafting this song and I get that it won’t be everyone’s cup of tea, but I don’t want to make it something that is ignorable.”
Yet despite Harry spending great lengths of energy and time moulding this new single, he’s honest and true to his approach, maintaining an instinctive and intuitive drive to write music, all the while understanding that the meaning of a song may not reveal itself until a significant amount of time has elapsed.
“Sometimes the meaning of songs come to me at certain gigs,” says Harry. “Sometimes there is a gestation period to certain songs. I knew it had to be a certain way at a time – which comes down to intuition – but playing songs again and again, the meaning reveals itself more.”
Harry likens this experience to what may be involved with the processing of a dream, a drawn-out period that requires integration.
“You have a dream,” says Harry. “Then over time and with enough distance, they’re easy enough to decipher, but the morning after they can be a complete enigma.”
Relating to songwriting in an intuitive way has meant that his upcoming album has needed time to develop.
“I’ve always wanted to make a proper acoustic album,” says Harry. “I’ve gigged more acoustically than anything else so I really wanted to capture that in a record, but I wanted to wait until I had the material that was good enough to carry that.”
Allowing time to construct the writing of the songs for the forthcoming album has also allowed Harry to sculpt the album into an LP or record that is traditional rather than simply a collection of songs.
“I know that making an album is a bit of a dying art nowadays,” says Harry. “But I still believe in the form and I think that you can really get to know an artist by listening to a whole album. I want this to be a definite album project as all these songs were recorded in the same place at a similar time, kind of like a record in that traditional sense.”
You can listen to Cocaine Hippos and watch the music video created by Rachel Lucas, who also directed the clip for Jackie by Blue Zone on all major streaming services.
Harry Hook Is Real is playing the Wesley Anne on Friday May 12, the day the album is set to be released. Keep up to date with everything Harry Hook Is Real by heading here.
This article was made in partnership with Harry Hook.
