Floorplan: Sanctified EP

Many people claim to do "Gospel House" or "Minimal House" or "Disco Tech" or some other monstrosity of adjectives stacked on top of each other in increasingly stupid combinations. It's all marketing, and the funny thing is that the only people who seem to take it seriously are the people writing it. To anyone else (but especially for the DJs who deserve to be called DJs), a beat is a beat is a beat and they'll scavenge anything, from any genre, that can do what they need to do to a dancefloor.

This is the school that Robert Hood comes from. Somewhere in the distant past, between Underground Resistance and the simple manufacture of beats that would go on to make up the Minimalism manifesto, Robert Hood had another identity that really could only be classified by piling up those ugly adjectives - something like "disco gospel techno," maybe. Among "electronica" snobs, Hood's Floorplan project was something of an aberration - a brief encounter with what they sneeringly call "filtered disco" but which a closer inspection of the best Floorplan release, 1996's Funky Souls, shows as something with far more depth than has been previously acknowledged.

So it's kind of fitting for Robert Hood's career arc that following the sci-fi detonations of his universally praised Omega and Omega: Alive albums, he's taken the crooked road and broken Floorplan out of the attic, polished off the cobwebs and dropped an EP with three of the dopest House tracks I've heard in awhile.

"We Magnify His Name" kicks off with that rusty squawkbox effect present on the best records that really could be called "filtered disco" back in the day - a rolling loop churning like a worn down jukebox... which gives way to a preacherman imploring you to recognize the worthiness of Him ... who is joined by a choir... which is backed by a warbling funk guitar riff. If this was all there was - well, I haven't heard Gospel House done this well (and with as little pandering to the cliches of the genre) in ages.

But that ain't it. Topped by little flourishes of tech FX polishing the sharp edges in a metallic gleam, "We Magnify His Name" is built upon and wrapped around a wireframe of ecstatic disco rather than the usual cheap organ sample. And that's the difference. It really is "Disco Gospel House" or whatever three words you want to pile on top of it. More importantly: it's nine minutes of fire for any dancefloor.

Despite the title, Sanctified isn't strictly a gospel-influenced record. "Baby Baby" is a throwback to classic '90s jack tracks with a hard boogie shuffle and choice short vocal clips that would be at home with Robert Armani and the roster of the pre-Ghetto House Dance Mania days. "Basic Principle" is more moody than the other two (hilariously, an organ is used here and not on "We Magnify His Name" with a far more sinister effect). It doesn't really seem to go with the other two companion tracks but I think that's entirely the point of the EP as a whole.

The takeaway from all this: if you know Robert Hood for one sound, you've put the man in a box and you don't know him at all. Put aside everything that has to do with preference and genres. If you don't find all of this exhilerating, I'm sorry but you just don't really belong on a dancefloor, much less leading one.

[ - Review by Terry Matthew / July 2011 - ]

Available: To be released on vinyl as well as digital starting August 22, 2011. Check mplantmusic.com for availability.