Calgary Duo HAIR CONTROL Put Inner Exploration Through the Breakbeat Machine on “New Age Breaks,” Lifted From New LP ‘Electric Pleasure’

Calgary, AB art-pop duo HAIR CONTROL, the collaborative project of Ryan Bourne (Chad VanGaalen, Ghostkeeper, The Plant City Band) and Rebecca Reid, release their debut album, Electric Pleasure. A 40-minute plunge into synth-pop, avant-dance, psychedelia, and electronic experimentation, the record turns love, longing, altered states, and existential anxiety into an invitation to move. Swathing lo-fi beats in layers of synthesizers, percussive textures, voices, and guest performances from Chad VanGaalen, Tea Fannie, Martha Zed, and more, it expands the duo’s self-described “lo-fi existential workout music” into its most immersive form yet.

Electric Pleasure took shape in long stretches of experimentation, with Bourne often working through the night until dawn. Reid remembers the sessions as a “looping, days-long portal,” as the music gradually expanded into stranger and more unexpected territory. The two moved intuitively, following ideas as they emerged, contributing sounds and textures, and knowing when to call in collaborators to push a track further. The result is a record that feels expansive and exploratory.

As the recordings progressed, Bourne felt the music was beginning to evoke the immersive feeling of being in love. That sensation became a core intention for both the album and HAIR CONTROL’s live show: to offer a temporary space free from self-concern, where listeners could surrender to connection, movement, and what he describes as a basic human need for ecstasy.

The album’s wide-ranging sonic vocabulary similarly moves between eras, drawing from the hypnotic pulse of Kraftwerk and Neu!, the synth-pop worlds of New Order, Yellow Magic Orchestra, and Gary Numan, and later electronic touchstones including Caribou, Four Tet, early MGMT, John Maus, and Beach House. Rather than settling into any one lineage, HAIR CONTROL uses those references as entry points into a record built around constant movement and transformation.

At the centre of that philosophy is focus track “New Age Breaks,” a surging collision of experimental breakbeat, synth-pop, and avant-dance constructed from first-take improvisations, a busy Roland 909 beat, vintage self-help affirmations, and an array of contributions from VanGaalen.

“New Age Breaks” began with a 909 breakbeat Bourne tracked to cassette before recording Reid improvising layers of synth overtop, ranging from hazy strings to ripping sawtooth patches. Her first improvisation carried what Bourne heard as a distinctly ’70s New Age quality, giving the track its straightforward title.

“The core of the track is essentially a collage, arranged from a bunch of first takes of synth improvisations by Rebecca,” Bourne explains.

Those improvisations became the raw material for the song rather than demos to be recreated. Bourne collaged them into an arrangement and added synth and bass synth, turning Reid’s spontaneous performances into something kinetic and tightly structured. The title ultimately came to represent the same collision: earnest inner exploration fed through a breakbeat machine, translating introspection into something rhythmic and bodily.

Once the basic arrangement was in place, Bourne invited longtime collaborator VanGaalen to contribute whatever he felt the track needed. VanGaalen responded expansively, adding processed clarinet, gorgeous flute, driving hammer dulcimer, and what Bourne calls a “pretty damn sexy” chorus vocal, all recorded at his Yoko Ono Studios.