The Halluci Nation

The Halluci Nation is real.

After starting a new cycle, 3-time Juno Award Winners- Bear Witness and Tim “2oolman” Hill of A Tribe Called Red reintroduced themselves as The Halluci Nation to reflect the evolution of their music and mission. The Halluci Nation, took its name from a phrase coined by John Trudell, to describe the vast global community of people who remember at their core, what it means to be human. As a visionary artist and activist, Trudell recognized the connection between his accomplishments and what ATCR did intuitively through music and art.

Trudell’s voice was the first heard on Tribe’s record, We Are The Halluci Nation, and fittingly, and is also the first you hear on The Halluci Nation’s record, One More Saturday Night. The album is a love letter to the Electric Pow Wow gatherings launched at Ottawa’s Babylon nightclub in 2007. It represents an imagined denouement to the biweekly Saturday-night parties that ended abruptly in 2017, without ever getting the proper send-off. One More Saturday Night thus pays homage to the parties’ energy and momentum that elevated The Halluci Nation to this pivotal point in their career of fully mastering their own music style while also moving beyond club music; or “mixing dance music with dance music,” as Bear Witness succinctly puts it.

This is a beginning, not an end, after all. The Halluci Nation maintains focus on what they feel they can impact most: how Indigenous people are seen. Through groundbreaking stage shows and ever-changing visuals, Bear Witness and 2oolman are working to create media that reflects the modern day Indigenous identity. They see themselves simply as contributors to a necessary conversation around a subtle and complex representation of the contemporary Indigenous experience.

In November 2023 The Halluci Nation continue to contribute to that conversation with their next project, “The Road To Halluci Mania”, a 2-part EP themed around their love for Professional Wrestling and overcoming obstacles by remaining to be an authentic representation of oneself.

“The last album we wrapped up a whole decade of experience up and closed that cycle. In doing so we gave the coordinates of where the future was headed. So that’s what this EP is,” says Bear. “it’s where we are in this present moment and gives another look into plans for the future of The Halluci Nation. It’s a project that people can dance to, but it still has the strong message we are known for. This time we wanted to show it through a bit of a different lens to help further push the conversation about indigenous representation and how we can all impact change”.

“Path of The Heel” exposes listeners to the “Heel” side of Professional Wrestling and the plot to take down the “baby face” Tag Team Champions by a group named “The Alie Nation”. This concept is played out through the production of hard hitting Dub-Step and Drum & Bass tracks, combined with further experimentation of cross-genre collaborations featuring Damian Abraham, and drum group Northern Cree. The result catapults The Halluci Nation’s classic sound and their message into the present and beyond.

“We wanted to take our music to a place it’s never been before and really challenge our abilities with this project,” says 2oolman. “We showed a little bit of our ambitious side on our last record by making a lot of songs that we’d been wanting to do for a long time. But that was just the beginning. We are at a point where we are making music we love, that is inspired by our everyday lives and all the incredible people that we have been lucky to surround ourselves with. This isn’t even a fraction of it… We’ve got so much more coming.”

This is just the START of THE HALLUCI NATION.

Host or Publisher The Wayfarer