- Robert Hood's most convincing big-room record yet.
- Robert Hood has spent the last decade rising to the top of the worldwide festival circuit in a way he never has before. His music has also become bigger, for better or worse. But one thing hasn't changed: his instinct for sleek, minimal arrangements and the ultimate power of a simple hook. He's still releasing some of the best music of his long and storied career.
Enter Regenerate, under the Monobox name. In a surprising move, this fall Hood once again dusted off the alias with an EP and an album. He rather alluringly calls Monobox "an alien project" inspired by a book about a monolithic block that orbits the earth with a threatening aura, but here's what you really need to know about it: Hood's most skewed but elemental techno, like Minimal Nation with a Drumcode makeover and a taste for strange, hard-to-place sounds.
Regenerate is Hood's most exciting full-length since Floorplan's Victorious in 2016. It doesn't present anything new per se, but it offers both hunger and focus. It hooks you in right from those big chords in the opening track, "Rise." There's nothing other than the essentials here, and each element is presented in its most anthemic form.
On Regenerate, Hood repurposes the arena-sized atmospherics of big-room techno for his own ends. Spacious, with every element doused in reverb, you really feel the impact of every small change. The sounds are truly futuristic—take "Blackwater Canal," nothing more than a simple vocal sample, a broken kick pattern and a smear of sci-fi synth that feels iridescent as it travels across the stereo spectrum. With a typical Hood touch, this synth is more dazzling than you ever thought a simple synth motif in a techno song could be.
This LP is all about maximizing utility and pleasure as directly as possible. The title track, a modulated chord that throbs and pulses over a silky arpeggio, recalls his early '90s work. It's Hood by numbers, but it sounds so immense and towering that it's like hearing him for the first time. The nine-minute "Exoplanet" centers around a slap-bass riff and decorates it with plenty of peripheral ear candy, while "Wargames" has a meaty trance lead you could sink your teeth into. Speaking of trance, Hood even tries on Tale Of Us-style melodrama with "Drydock," whose central melody seems designed to turn up DC-10 at sunset. Hood has it down to a science, and Regenerate reflects his latest, most efficient product.
It might seem odd that the alias once dedicated to some of Hood's most leftfield techno is now producing his most approachable work. Still, you should find plenty to fixate on. Listen closely to Regenerate and you'll hear the odd touches amid all the crowd pleasing, like the staccato assault of "Angel City," a truly unusual rhythm for this kind of record. But you'll also feel a thunderous, universal thump. It's hard to imagine any techno fan hearing "Rise" or "Exoplanet" and not instantly falling for its charms. Hood helped invent this style of techno almost 30 years ago, and he's still showing everyone else how it's done.
Tracklist01. Rise
02. Blackwater Canal
03. Wargames
04. Angel City
05. Exoplanet
06. Drydock
07. Regenerate