techno format: 3 x 12''
Tracks
Robert Hood returns after last year's ‘Minimal Nation' re-issue with his new artist album ‘Omega'.
The album is based on the 1971 classic science fiction film, ‘The Omega Man' starring Charlton Heston and derived from Richard Matheson's 1954 novel ‘I Am Legend' (which was recently re-adapted to the big screen). The album is not intended as an exact soundtrack to run alongside the original film, but Hood was heavily influenced by the movie and has used it as his inspiration.
This album's concept is a long-held vision of Hood's and the film's stimulus has presented itself both musically here, and even spiritually for him, since he watched it as a child. Its themes appear even more relevant today and continue to haunt: "it's definitely metaphoric," he says "and if we don't heed the signs, this is where we'll end up. We live in a society where we just consume. We just take. We don't operate on the concept of giving".
The film resonated with him down the years and there are many parallels between the post apocalyptic world portrayed in the film and parts of Detroit where he grew up. "You can look at downtown Detroit at night after the nine to five have migrated home and it turns into a ghost town," he muses. "You had abandoned buildings during the crack epidemic and this progressive city had these ‘zombies' walking the street. Detroit is a prophetic vision of the sign of things to come."
Whilst the brooding ‘Towns That Disappeared Completely' and laser-strafed ‘War In The Streets' certainly brings these comparisons together, the album still remains a work of science fiction, albeit one rooted in decaying urban realism as opposed to otherworldly fantasy. Tracks such as ‘Are You God?' delve into the ‘messiah complex' of Charlton Heston's last man on earth battle to save humankind from the infected inhabitants of earth whilst the album's preceding single ‘Alpha' is dancefloor minimalism at its finest - yet another lesson in stripped down machine funk. Floating between cinematic experimentalism ‘The Plague (Cleansing Maneuvers)', low-key minimal grooves ‘The Workers of Iniquity' and pure dancefloor adrenalin rush ‘Omega (End Times)' Robert Hood gives us another minimal masterpiece.
As Hood himself concludes. "This movie is an exercise in faith. Everybody is dead. Through all this adversity there is still hope but man has to repent. This is a message of hope and through the adversity people will begin to look at a higher force."
