"It's a slow motion Katrina. You look at the World
Trade Center; a couple planes crash and all the sympathy, the outpouring, the
federal dollars, they pour in. They got 3000 people. Here we probably had in
the last 30 years [unintelligible] we probably had 20,000 people killed. We've
had thousands of houses destroyed, thousands of businesses destroyed. Where's
our sympathy? No wonder everybody leaves." - Lowell Boileau
Tracklist:
1. The Exodus
2. Motor City
3. Better Life
4. The Wheel
5. Black Technician
6. Learning
7. Drive (The Age of Automation)
8. Torque One
9. Hate Transmissions
10. Slow Motion Katrina
11. Assembly
12. A Time To Rebuild
1. The Exodus
2. Motor City
3. Better Life
4. The Wheel
5. Black Technician
6. Learning
7. Drive (The Age of Automation)
8. Torque One
9. Hate Transmissions
10. Slow Motion Katrina
11. Assembly
12. A Time To Rebuild
To properly engage this work, one must first view it as an
act of empathy; extended to the ghost of a dead and dying city, and sharpened
by the focused precision of an established master. Sketched by the scattered
insights of Julien Temple's "Requiem of Detroit", Robert Hood draws
from the musical lineage of luminaries like Drexciya, Carl Craig, and Jeff Mills to craft a
conceptually driven album that seeks nothing less than the historical and
futuristic embodiment of an abandoned metropolis.
Dormant within the music are the expressed - but unstated - successes, hopes and failures of a city that shaped the terms of modernization before being crushed under its demands. From the slowly building and falsely triumphant melancholy of "The Exodus'" opening notes, it asks you - through pounding and softening bass throbs and recurring percussive/synth formulations - to see Detroit from the eyes of those who voyaged there from poorer, less developed states; carrying only the gradually denied promises of middle class success and an inclusive industrialized modernity. Marking - with painful melodic relentlessness - the bleak sense of unforeseeable desolation that colors all interpretation of the past just as it colors even the most hopeful songs on the album.
As an epic without any pretense of glory, it makes aurally palpable tragedy the backbone and constant of the album. Infusing even the most respectful and worshipful notes and riffs with a distance that makes it clear that it's depicting what was instead of what is. Tracks like the funky, Detroit-grounded "Motor City" and the technical, admiring and religiously inspired love-letters to black ingenuity "Black Technician" and "Learning" highlight that effect with alarming and patient nuance. Making even a climax like Black Technician's breakdown at 6:23 simultaneously hearken to the church bells used for weddings and funerals.
It's that double consciousness; that constant sense of musically inhabiting two conflicting opinions of one history, and having two minds about one set of achievements that guides the albums tonal diversity. Buttressed by Hood's ability to skillfully glide between the playful - almost boastful - reflections on the fruits of black labor like "Drive (The Age of Automaton)" and the ambivalent bitter-sweetness of "Better Life", the album remains grounded and emotionally complex in a way that only a native can be. Bravely eschewing the sad, tired retreat to poverty porn while wordlessly presenting criticism and sadness in a way that's omnipresent but never defining.
As an epic without any pretense of glory, it makes aurally palpable tragedy the backbone and constant of the album. Infusing even the most respectful and worshipful notes and riffs with a distance that makes it clear that it's depicting what was instead of what is. Tracks like the funky, Detroit-grounded "Motor City" and the technical, admiring and religiously inspired love-letters to black ingenuity "Black Technician" and "Learning" highlight that effect with alarming and patient nuance. Making even a climax like Black Technician's breakdown at 6:23 simultaneously hearken to the church bells used for weddings and funerals.
It's that double consciousness; that constant sense of musically inhabiting two conflicting opinions of one history, and having two minds about one set of achievements that guides the albums tonal diversity. Buttressed by Hood's ability to skillfully glide between the playful - almost boastful - reflections on the fruits of black labor like "Drive (The Age of Automaton)" and the ambivalent bitter-sweetness of "Better Life", the album remains grounded and emotionally complex in a way that only a native can be. Bravely eschewing the sad, tired retreat to poverty porn while wordlessly presenting criticism and sadness in a way that's omnipresent but never defining.
Perspective is what allows this album to speak with the force of narrative. To talk about it, one must do the same. It's impossible to hear "The Exodus", "Motor City" and "Better Life" and not detect the forlorn dimension hindsight grants the hopes that populated Detroit. It's impossible to hear "The Wheel", "Black Technician", "Learning", "Drive (The Age of Automaton)", "Torque One" and "Hate Transmissions" and not hear an artist lovingly guide you - with purposefully mechanized instrumentation - through the advent of the assembly line, the factory, and then to the very cars that were used to leave a city that left its natives. But its in the final movement - skillfully articulated with tracks like "Slow Motion Katrina", "Assembly", and "A Time To Rebuild" - where the album becomes its most emotionally complex and its most tonally straightforward.
There's no room for interpretation with "Slow Motion Katrina". Expanding on the instrumentally and stylistically jazzy flirtations Hood has applied throughout his career (particularly in tracks like The Color of Skin), he uses a combination of jazz, blues and techno to compose a haunting and morose track that musically documents Detroit's decomposition. Letting a "slow motion" siren dominate the background as a placeholder for years crime, murder, theft, he darkly develops the track with a low-key bass, noirish string plucking and an almost accusatory piano, painting the soundscape between bits of halted progression. It would challenge the whole mood of the album if he stopped there and let it languish as yet another contribution to the "Woe Is Detroit. Can She Ever Recover?" narrative. I daresay it would diminish the sense of understanding that makes the album worth grappling with. But he doesn't.
With "Assembly", he returns to the ambiguity that distinguishes much of the album, but unlike many of the other tracks, his ambiguity is thematic instead of tonal. Emphasizing with slow and muted progression a more understated musical depiction of the travels we heard at the albums outset. Using bass and synthetic keys to mark movement (just as he did in "The Exodus"), he heralds a return to Detroit and uses the climaxes within the song to portray that as a triumph in itself. But what that triumph means and what it portends can't be divined with the clarity used to analyze history and as such, there's a halfness and an incompletion that undergirds the song. Something that leaves what it is and what it means open to the tumults of the present in a way that can't be said for tracks like "Better Life".
But it's in the conceptually fractured nature of "Assembly" and "A Time To Rebuild" that Robert Hood articulates his embers of hope. They're open, underdeveloped and precarious tracks because the nature of the hope he's depicting is open, underdeveloped and precarious. While this makes for imperfect songs on an album full of objectively excellent ones, I don't think this album could have or should have ended in any other fashion. It's true to a vision that supersedes exclusively musical considerations and sees music as a means that leaves a reflection on the nature of Detroit as it is, was and shall be as the ultimate end.
Where Julien Temple's "Requiem of Detroit" sought illustration through historical, sociological and visual depiction, Robert Hood's Motor: Nighttime World 3 seeks expression through encapsulation. Expressing without language the expectations, development, history, and tragedy latent to the greatest metropolitan success and failure in the modern era. Every synth is a dirge. Every beat carries the movement of history. Every riff reflects the particularities of black influences and black-created stylings from techno, to jazz, to blues, to funk. Every climax is pleated with the triumphs and afflictions of a lost generation. And every track is a story.
There's no room for interpretation with "Slow Motion Katrina". Expanding on the instrumentally and stylistically jazzy flirtations Hood has applied throughout his career (particularly in tracks like The Color of Skin), he uses a combination of jazz, blues and techno to compose a haunting and morose track that musically documents Detroit's decomposition. Letting a "slow motion" siren dominate the background as a placeholder for years crime, murder, theft, he darkly develops the track with a low-key bass, noirish string plucking and an almost accusatory piano, painting the soundscape between bits of halted progression. It would challenge the whole mood of the album if he stopped there and let it languish as yet another contribution to the "Woe Is Detroit. Can She Ever Recover?" narrative. I daresay it would diminish the sense of understanding that makes the album worth grappling with. But he doesn't.
With "Assembly", he returns to the ambiguity that distinguishes much of the album, but unlike many of the other tracks, his ambiguity is thematic instead of tonal. Emphasizing with slow and muted progression a more understated musical depiction of the travels we heard at the albums outset. Using bass and synthetic keys to mark movement (just as he did in "The Exodus"), he heralds a return to Detroit and uses the climaxes within the song to portray that as a triumph in itself. But what that triumph means and what it portends can't be divined with the clarity used to analyze history and as such, there's a halfness and an incompletion that undergirds the song. Something that leaves what it is and what it means open to the tumults of the present in a way that can't be said for tracks like "Better Life".
But it's in the conceptually fractured nature of "Assembly" and "A Time To Rebuild" that Robert Hood articulates his embers of hope. They're open, underdeveloped and precarious tracks because the nature of the hope he's depicting is open, underdeveloped and precarious. While this makes for imperfect songs on an album full of objectively excellent ones, I don't think this album could have or should have ended in any other fashion. It's true to a vision that supersedes exclusively musical considerations and sees music as a means that leaves a reflection on the nature of Detroit as it is, was and shall be as the ultimate end.
Where Julien Temple's "Requiem of Detroit" sought illustration through historical, sociological and visual depiction, Robert Hood's Motor: Nighttime World 3 seeks expression through encapsulation. Expressing without language the expectations, development, history, and tragedy latent to the greatest metropolitan success and failure in the modern era. Every synth is a dirge. Every beat carries the movement of history. Every riff reflects the particularities of black influences and black-created stylings from techno, to jazz, to blues, to funk. Every climax is pleated with the triumphs and afflictions of a lost generation. And every track is a story.
With this album, Robert Hood has marshaled every influence and every style he's ever dabbled with to create an album with the force of documentary. Using his stylistic and instrumental affection for jazz, with his multifaceted, funk-rooted rhythmic sense and tempering them with the patient calculation inherent to his minimalist underpinnings, he's released the album that's redefined the apex of his capabilities and shown the fire that Detroit techno continues to hold. In Motor: Nighttime World 3, you have a concept album in the best sense of the term that successfully uses the aural to be polemical. It's not enough to say that this album represents, embodies and depicts Detroit: it is Detroit.
