The Essential… Robert Hood

02: ROBERT HOOD
INTERNAL EMPIRE
(M-PLANT / TRESOR, 1994)

From the harsh styles of Hardwax came a shift to a more refined, pared down sound and with it a new label, M-Plant. After the excellent ‘Protein Valve’ 12”, Hood moved onto his next album. Whilst W.T. Vol. 2 felt like a compilation of tracks, Internal Empire was guided by a narrative logic and felt like a whole. Jointly released with Tresor, this became most people’s entry point into Hood’s work and seemed like a statement of intent. Gone were the harsh textures, to an extent, and instead the appearance of the looped repetitive minimal patterns that he would hone throughout his career. Owing as much to Sahko records and Mika Vanio as it does to UR, tracks like ‘Minus’, which plays with Reichian phase delays, and ‘Home’, which predates similar sounding euro minimal by at least ten years, are as devastatingly simple and potent now as they were in 1994.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 30th, 2010 at 5:09 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.

  • Jason

    Fantastic stuff – a great summary of nearly 20 years of one man's work – really enjoyed the read and the journey through his music.

  • Kia

    Hmmm… I agreed until the Klock remix and 'Superman' release were identified as 'Essential'. They're not. If any number of musicians had released them they'd be essential parts of their repertoire but not when you consider Hood's output throughout the years. There are simply much better productions. With those two examples in mind, it's such a relief to hear the latest 'Omega' LP which is thankfully a return to form… as it happens it was already playing through my speakers!

  • Bugz

    lacking some Floorplant/Drama material

  • Bugz

    Great artist, retrospective lacking some Floorplan/Drama material imo

  • Bugz

    Great artist, retrospective lacking some Floorplan/Duet material imo

  • Fran

    Actually, ‘Range’ from the Superman release, has all the hallmarks of a future classic. I think it deserves a place here. Nice to see more recent material getting some room among the more obvious classics from ‘back in the day’

  • RAW

    quality roundup and entertaining read!

    I thought I knew my onions as far as Hood went but there's a couple of bits here I'm gonna have to track down and check out now…

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  • Langer

    What about The Pace? surely his best dancefloor moment. Plus there is so much more great material missed.

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  • RuaridhTVO

    Being limited to 10 items means inevitably lots of things get missed, plus it’s a highly subjective exercise innit? Your mileage may vary, etc

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