“I Let My Emotions Out through the Wires”: Robert Hood on Techno, Spirituality and a Lot More
Over at The Quietus, there’s an illuminating interview with Robert Hood, whose Motor: Nighttime World 3 made my best-of list for 2012.
In the interview, which works only partly to promote Paradise (Hood’s new release under his Floorplan alias), the main subject is the rich and varied social, cultural, political and, of course, musical life of Detroit in the 1970s and 1980s. Along the way, Hood explains how gospel, disco and funk, as well as his fellow travelers in Underground Resistance in the early 1990s, have affected his work as a techno producer and DJ. He also grapples with the question of how one might communicate spiritual and political ideas in instrumental music. This is definitely recommended, eye- and ear-opening reading for anyone who has ever been interested in EDM or deluded into thinking either that the style’s biggest stars—in the UK or in Berlin or in Ibiza—were the beginning and end of the story or that the music’s originators were simply soundtracking the hedonism of the well-heeled. As always, click through for more…