Review
Genre and Mood
Marek Hemmann’s Hooray is polished house and techno from a producer German Wikipedia places mainly in minimal techno. Its mood is in its title: uplifting and joyful, on an album that Textura, despite its name, called no mope-fest, buoyed by a palpable spirit of uplift and controlled jubilation.
Song Summary
Hooray is the seventh of ten tracks on Bittersweet and runs five minutes and 35 seconds. Like every track on the album it has a one-word title, which Textura called unfussy and the label laconic and scant. Textura’s review of the album gave it a single sentence, and a memorable one: even the most morose human being would find it impossible to resist its sinuous melodies.
Musical Breakdown
No source walks through Hooray part by part. What follows is the pattern Textura heard across the album, offered as a guide to listen with rather than as a description of this track.
Intro
On a typical Hemmann track, Textura wrote, an airtight, high-energy groove locks firmly into position first. Listen for how quickly the rhythm settles here.
Main Section
Then come the melodic elements, usually of a joyous disposition. In Hooray these are the sinuous melodies the review praised: listen for lines that wind and turn rather than repeat a single riff.
Outro
How the track ends is not described in any source.
Concepts in Focus
The album is built on the groove, the felt way the drums and bass lock together. Textura’s order of events, groove first and melody second, means the body is already moving by the time the tune arrives, and that is a large part of why a track like this feels joyful rather than merely busy.
Bittersweet also uses sampling, but quietly: Textura found the samples integrated so seamlessly that it was next to impossible to separate them from the parts Hemmann generated electronically. Sampling does not have to announce itself; here it disappears into the texture.
Artistic Context
Marek Hemmann, born in Gera in 1979, began on the guitar before turning to electronic music at techno parties around his hometown in the late 1990s; he has lived in Jena since 2005 and releases mainly on its label Freude am Tanzen. After his debut In Between, which includes Marek Hemmann – Gemini, he made the duo album Marian with the singer Fabian Reichelt, heard on Marian – For You. Bittersweet followed on 9 August 2013, his second solo album.
Impact and Reception
Textura reviewed Bittersweet in October 2013, calling its tracks sophisticated fusions of rhythm and pop melody and singling out Hooray for its melodies. Freude am Tanzen has uploaded it to YouTube twice, in 2015 and again in 2019, and Hemmann’s own channel carries it too. Put it on when you need cheering up.
