Hypnosis Negative – the feeling of being turned inside out, chasing your own feet around the floor. Fiddle and flute play a psychedelic display of traditional dance tunes, the colour of blackberries and the texture of ice snapping across the lake in spring. Combined with tectonic gestures on drums and bass, Hypnosis Negative creates a massive and powerfully danceable sound that sits at the unreal intersection of folk music, EDM, and jazz fusion. Katariina Tirmaste (Estonia) and Alan Mackie (Canada) animate traditional music from their homes and from along the roads in between, collaborating and innovating with rhythm section players from across Europe and Canada.
Hypnosis Negative improvises new arrangements each time to match and carry the energy of the dance floor, making every show an authentically organic experience, unique to the moment and the people in it.
Their debut album “Three Corners”, nominated at the 2023 Estonian Folk Music Awards (Etnokulp) in the category of “True Traditional Music”, features 10 tracks of traditional tunes reimagined for modern partner dancing. Alan and Katariina are driven by the power of playing a single tune over and over and over again, having lived its mesmerizing effect as both dancers and musicians. The music on “Three Corners” dreams of condensing this experience into concise fables, each tune but a small window into a vast musical world.
“Three Corners” features Spanish percussionist Juan de la Fuente Alcón – Hypnosis Negative's roster also includes the Estonian rhythm section Tõnis Kirsipu and Mattias Tirmaste, as well as the Canadian rhythm section Steven Foster and Jaron Freeman-Fox.
“...stories from both sides of the Atlantic Ocean, Katariina Tirmaste and Alan Mackie have tied them together in such a way that there are no knots... an invisible hand bends your joints and pushes you up from your chair to dance.” - Kaisa Kuslapuu @ Müürileht (translated from Estonian)