Hood
Slumberland Records
If you've never heard Hood before, it's not because of a shortage of recorded material. Between albums, singles, compilation appearances, and side projects, the band's discography is four pages long. However, some of the items are maddeningly hard to find due to small-numbered runs and obscure labels. But now, thanks to American labels like Slumberland and Drop Beat, these records are slightly easier to find.
Finding a Hood record is worth the effort. Throughout its career, Hood has explored many different realms of music. From their early forays into noisy pop, Disco Inferno-influenced post-rock, and moody, Bedhead-style slowcore to later experiments in swirling ambient electronic music, Hood has always maintained a delicate balance between melody and experimentation, layering organic and inorganic elements with creativity and finesse.
When brothers Richard and Chris Adams began recording songs at their home in Leeds in 1990, the phrase "lo-fi" meant little more than "poor sound quality" to most people. Before the unpolished, immediate recorded style of bands like Pavement, Guided by Voices, and Sebadoh became well known, Hood was making scratchy, untrained bedroom recordings. Fluff Records soon released a full-length, Cabled Linear Traction in 1994 (it was repressed in '95 and then released on CD in '99). The album -- a collection of singles -- was widely praised and compared to everything from Bark Psychosis to Nick Drake to My Bloody Valentine. In 1996, Slumberland released Hood's second album, Silent '88, featuring both "The Field is Cut" and "Her Innocent Stock of Words." The 26-track album has often been referred to as "difficult," possibly because the songs run the gamut from shimmering pop songs to murky feedback washes to out-and-out drum and bass. After Silent '88, Hood delved deeper into ambient and electronic music with their next albums, 1997's Structured Disasters (Happy Go Lucky), 1998's Rustic Houses, Forlorn Valleys (Domino), 1999's The Cycle of Days and Seasons (Domino), and a remix 12-inch on Drop Beat, also in 1999.
Jeanne Acceturo
last updated:
08/31/01
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Disco Inferno, Flying Saucer Attack, The Third Eye Foundation, Bedhead, Crescent, Movietone, The Busy Signals, Languis, Tse Tse Fly, Ian Crause, Mogwai
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