ALBUM REVIEWS
early Hood, not a lot happens, but what
does happen is all the more exquisite
for its lack of adornment. The precisely
executed layers of percussion, drums
and nagging-but-evocative synth loops
are characteristic of a producer who
combines power with space, allowing his
tracks to breathe.
ROBERT HOOD
20 Years Of M-Plant Music
M-Plant
To paraphrase AC/DC, if you want
a three-CD retrospective from a
member of techno’s founding fathers,
you’ve got it
A leading light of Detroit’s second wave
of techno pioneers, Robert Hood is also
one of the most revered, bestowing a
series of sacred texts upon the faithful
since around the time Taylor Swift was
born.
‘20 Years Of M-Plant Music’, an almost
career-spanning collection of Hood’s
M-Plant output (so nothing from his
Underground Resistance years), goes
some way to explaining why he inspires
such devotion. It sees two decades of
single-minded techno distilled into three
CDs – his earlier, minimal compositions
on the first (very much the Detroit disc),
funk and soul (the timing of which
coincided with his relocation from Motor
City to Alabama) on the second disc,
and a third set of previously unreleased
bits and new tracks. It has a combined
running time of three hours and 44
minutes. Hardly a moment is wasted.
Fittingly, we open with a homage to
Detroit, specifically the city skyline,
in 1997’s ‘The Grey Area’. Like most
Fussy is something Hood is most
certainly not. At times – on ‘Protein
Valve 1’, for instance, or on ‘Untitled’,
when the hi-hats don’t appear until well
over halfway in – his tracks have all
the potential threat of an ill-lit corridor
disappearing into the blackness. It’s the
reason his work is so often described
as “cerebral”, despite lacking literary
lyrics or dizzying key changes or any of
the other accoutrements we normally
associate with clever music, because it’s
a right-brained kind of cerebral, leading
the mind along those corridors.
Equally, Hood’s early brand of minimalism
asks us to reassess what we perceive
as a DJ tool – those motorised slabs of
beat that bind a set, but are designed
specifically as bridges between one peak
and the next. On a practical level, m X