- Early in his career, Robert Hood cycled through several aliases. He was Dr Kevorkian, Inner Sanctum, The Vision and others, but he's mostly used his given name and Floorplan. Records on the fringes of his catalogue—the micro-modulations of Monobox's Realm, or the sample-based techno of Inner Sanctum's Unseen—have been re-assigned as parts of those two greater wholes. When he compared this consolidation to a solar eclipse, Hood was suggesting a circular process of renewal. Just as Internal Empire, Omega and subsequent albums have refreshed Hood's minimalism by adding a little more each time, a forthcoming album for Dekmantel promises to revisit his skeletal loops of old.
From the gospel choir techno of "We Magnify His Name" onwards, Floorplan has undergone a similar process, which Hood's daughter Lyric is now part of. The B-side of their latest 12-inch, "Tell You No Lie," resurrects that 2011 track's spiritual energy with prancing strings and arcing vocal harmonies, though the samples of Brainstorm's "Lovin' Is Really My Game" don't carry Floorplan's usual theological overtones. Compared to previous standards, "Tell You No Lie" is more slickly edited than "We Magnify His Name" and less earnest than "Never Grow Old," but it stands apart for being outrageously fun.
"Music" makes it especially apparent that Hood's house and techno personas are dissolving into each other. The sort of transition track that connects house and techno in a DJ set, "Music" moves so quickly that its siren synth seems to leave a vapour trail. It's a typically excellent tool from Hood, whose throbbing chords and gospel talk echo Floorplan's "Glory B." Music that feeds off itself in this way usually ends up picking at bare bones before long, but by synthesising his best traits, Hood is finding new angles on one of the most distinctive phases of his career.
TracklistA Music
B Tell You No Lie