Release Date: Jul 23, 2013
Genre(s): Electronic, Techno, Club/Dance, Minimal Techno, Detroit Techno
Record label: M-Plant
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As the name suggests, Floorplan has but one aim: Robert Hood's side-project is all about durable DJ tools, 4 AM bangers, incendiary floor-ready bombs. In a way these functional tracks don't really do much. They're tense, claustrophobic, self-contained units, galloping loop-based constructs that build and evolve through a series of microscopic changes over six to eight minutes.
This is the debut album from Floorplan, a moniker Robert Hood has been DJing under for some time, having released several EPs under that name. Intended as an outlet for the minimal techno pioneer's dance floor material, multiple surprising and cleverly integrated rhythms weave in and out of the four-on-the-floor pulse. It's in some ways a direct contrast, and continuation of, his more cinematic material under his name, namely last year's excellent Motor: Nighttime World Vol.
When pressing play on an album called Paradise, you could feasibly expect to hear just about anything. Jangly folk-rock? Teary-eyed ambient? Maybe even nihilistic black metal? But the one thing you probably won’t expect is this: Floorplan’s opener “Let’s Ride” is a relentless, bustling thump, a slice of minimalist techno chugging and wheezing straight out of the gates. It sounds distinctly terrestrial, urban even, and, when an indecipherable looped vocal and dissonant synth pad enter later on, testament to the overwhelming and disorienting effects of the modern city.