Robert Hood began his career with Underground Resistance, a Detroit collective known for its bold, anti-corporate vision of techno as a musical form by and for the black youth of a city left behind by a racist nation. Hood left Underground Resistance in 1992; today he lives in Alabama and works as an ordained minister when he is not touring or recording. But that core belief in techno’s revelatory potential resonates throughout his catalog. Hood pioneered minimal techno with early releases like 1994’s Minimal Nation, but his work as Floorplan sings with a joyous maximalism. He has made records under the alias since 1996, but over the past decade, it has become his main gig. Supernatural is his third album under the alias since 2013, and his second as a duo alongside his daughter Lyric; it is also the fullest expression to date of the spiritual dimension of his music. It is clear that his activities in the DJ booth and the pulpit share the same goal: the search beyond the self.
The core of Hood’s music is still techno: Opening tracks “There Was a Time” and “Dance Floor” are built on thunderous beats. As the album continues, the surface becomes more soulful; “Oasis” and “Brothers + Sisters” are rife with orchestral disco swells and reverberating piano riffs. The Floorplan sound is much warmer than Hood’s solo work, a shade more house than techno, and Supernatural contains the duo’s most enthusiastic work yet. “Song Like This” feels like genuine gospel music, not just a dance remix—a veritable tabernacle choir of joyous voices, organ licks, and cymbals crashing. For the less spiritually inclined, the album still functions as a full-bodied dance workout. Its most intense tracks, like “I Try,” are more jock jam than Joubert Singers, complete with literal whistles. The Hoods wind the record down with a more contemplative cut, “Generations From Now,” turning the album’s sights away from heaven and back onto the bodies of the true believers left in the last moments of early-morning light.
Previous Floorplan tracks like “We Magnify His Name” chopped up recordings of sermons and choirs, as does this album. But on Supernatural the duo goes beyond samples and delivers a full-fledged vocal gospel number: an uptempo techno take on the traditional hymn “His Eye Is on the Sparrow,” featuring Carol Otis. Covered by everyone from Marvin Gaye to Jessica Simpson, this Sunday-morning standard is a perfect expression of the ecstasy Floorplan find in dance: “Why should I feel discouraged? Why should the shadows come?” sings Otis over pounding organ stabs and flashing open hi-hats. “I sing because I’m happy, I sing because I’m free.”
Kanye West’s recent embrace of gospel music has been linked to his mystifying rightward turn; Jesus Is King is laced with elements of Joel Osteen’s prosperity theology, and the admiration is apparently mutual. By comparison, the humility and sincerity of the Hoods’ message makes Kanye look like The Righteous Gemstones’ Uncle Baby Billy, a charlatan shilling shopping-mall snake oil. There’s room in the pews for everyone in the church of techno. Supernatural captures a moment of epiphany that isn’t confined to Sunday service: that holy time when the ravers go home and the churchgoers come out, side by side like lion and lamb, reveling in the glow of worship, doing the same dance for different gods.
Buy: Rough Trade
