Zum
reprinted with permission from issue 12

Looking back at my music listening career, it's fairly easy for me to pick out the handful of bands that had the biggest impact on my musical taste and record buying decisions. In some cases, they led me to a sound taht predated the band -- like hearing the Specials and the Jam for the first time. And there are others that showed me a new sound to explore -- Photek and Ed Rush.

Of course, the best scenario is hearing a band that gives both past and new sounds to explore and one band that did that for me was Hood. Their mix of pop and noise led me to bands like Bark Psychosis, Flying Saucer Attack, Disco Infreno, Northern Picture Library and most of the Slumberland catalog. And after listening to those bands a slew of others came into the picture -- AMP, Movietone, Field Mice, Jessamine, Wisdom of Harry, Avrocar... Now maybe I would have heard those bands eventually or someone would have recommended them to me later, but I know that the day I walked into Mod Lang and bought Cabled Linear Traction, I left holding a piece of vinyl that expanded my musical horizon instantly.   --Chris Jones

I guess we should start at the beginning since I have to admit I'm often confused about who's really in Hood. If my memory is correct, the band was started by Richard and Chris Adams around 1991 and Stewart Anderson was the first to play drums for Hood. After Stewart left to do Boyracer full-time, Andrew Johnson took over on drums and at some point John Clyde Evans joined the band, as well as Craig Tattersall. I know other people have been involved, like Nicola (Boyracer/Empress), but I guess some sort of band member history and current roster would be helpful...
Well you're pretty much right there with your history. It's far too complex and drawn out to into any detail. Suffice to say that the current line up is C. & R. Adams plus G. Brown and M. Robson.

The first Hood record I bought was Cabled Linear Traction. Mike Slumberland clued me in on you guys and written on the record I got was "amazing FSA meets Bark Psychosis meets mystery pop" (I hadn't heard either of those bands at the time...a situation I quickly changed after listening to CLT). Since then, I've seen a number of reviews that mention both of these bands as well. Who do you see as the bands that influenced Hood and/or what was the musical background of the members of Hood?
There was no musical background to any members of Hood, we'd never been in bands before but we'd listened to music quite obsessively from an early age. Personally I love Bark Psychosis but think FSA are a load of old rubbish. Bands to have influenced Hood at one time or another could also include: Disco Inferno, Talk Talk, Smiths, Pavement, REM, Insides, Movietone, Third Eye Foundation, Field Mice, Autechre...

I think the term "mystery pop" describes the earlier Hood material fairly well, but I like to think of Hood as being "pop saboteurs." Making a pop song and then adding feedback, electronic noises, drum maching bits, and whatever else can be employed to both destroy the "simple pop song" and to create something that is equally catchy, musical, and interesting out of it. How did you approach making the songs on CLT, Silent 88, and the earlier 7 inches? Did they start as pop songs and then get additional bits added?
More often than not, but sometimes that's just the way they came out. Especially in the early days we didn't really know what we were doing, so a lot of the stuff was accidental which to me often leads to the most creative stuff anyway.

The word "pastoral" also seems to come up when discussing Hood with people. I think the last two albums really exemplify this quality, but it was also there on earlier albums. Be it song titles and lyrics or the album artwork, it seems that the countryside plays a large part in Hood. What's behind that?
Well we're just good old-fashioned country boys. Wetherby is not exactly out in the sticks, but is far enough out of the city to have a rural feel. You don't have to walk too far to find a nice field. If you grow up in an environment like this it is bound to have some kind of effect on what you do.

The songs on the new album "sound" like paintings to me -- very sparse, ethereal and quite like the photos on the album. Were any of you photography or art majors in school? How about film? For some reason I can see Hood making a movie not too unlike Koyaanisqatsi.
I will have to show my ignorance there. We are interested in all manner of photography and film and to me it is just an extension of the music. We use films and projections when playing live mainly to talk the onus off our own bland, forgettable faces. With the exception of Mr Tattersall, none of us have studied photography or film. I think, just like music, it can be just as effective if you do something as a complete novice.

Are the days when Hood made noisy-pop tracks like "her innocent stock of words" behind you now or do you think both the sparse/ethereal sound and the noisy-pop sound are still part of the band?
Well you never know. There's only so many songs you can write in a particular style before things start sounding same-y. As a music listener I often get frustrated when bands start changing their sound, but as a musician, if I play something that sounds like something we did 5 years ago then I want to move away from it very quickly.

The song titles often sound like they could be essays dealing with socio-economic and political issues. How do these titles come about and do you see the band as having a socio-economic and political message?
No not really, they're generally just rubbish, just words strung together. Sometimes during the course of the working day there will be something that you get frustrated at and it worth writing about but that's as far as it goes really.

What's up with Leeds? Seems like a good number of great bands have called Leeds home. Did everyone grow up in that area or did college sort of bring people together?
Yes there is a goodish scene in Leeds. There's tons of good bands to go and watch. The Wedding Present, I guess, were the grandfathers of the scene. They had lots of influence on people. Musically I never found them stimulating, but I liked the way they conducted themselves. From a distance it must seem as though the Leeds scene is really good, but only a tiny percent of Leeds population has ever heard of Boyracer or Hood.

I often wanted to go to Leeds, hoping that I would be able to see Hood, Boyracer, Wedding Present... play live. Not sure if a show like that ever happened or not, but I do know I've never seen Hood play live. Why hasn't a US tour ever been done? Interest? Money? Time? Will one ever happen?
It would happen if someone rang us and said "Do Hood want to come and play in America? If so I can arrange it." That scenario has never happened. Time is obviously a problem as I believe it's a big country you've got yourselves there.

Speaking of time, the members of Hood seem to keep themselves quite busy musically. In addistion to making music as Hood, members are also doing music as the Famous Boyfriend/the Remote Viewer, Downpour, Mike Nichols and his Excellency, and John Clyde Evans (solo). How difficult is it to record as Hood with everyone doing so many things?
Well it was difficult just to get together even if none of the above existed. People always tended to go off in their own directions and they still do. A good situation as we can run a thinly veiled dictatorship without anyone getting too upset.

For the new album, did everyone go to the studio and work on it as a complete album or were the songs recorded over a period of time as peoples, schedule's allowed?
Yeah it was a really bad time for us as everyone was leaving to do their own thing and we only had two weeks to do it and everything that could have gone wrong in the studio did go wrong. I think we did well in the circumstances but the memories aren't good.

It seems like more and more "indie" bands started making electronic and beat-based music in the past few years. How did you guys get into that sounds? Do you listen to a lot of techno and/or drum 'n' bass?
I think Chris and Andrew started listening to people like Autechre a few years ago and got heavily into drum 'n' bass when it first appeared.

Speaking of DnB, I think Graham Sutton (ex- Bark Psychosis) aka Boymerang put out some great DnB -- probably the best stuff from the "indie"-to-electronic artists. I also like the Downpour EP that came out on Drop Beat and I hear that there is a Downpour full-length coming out soon. What can we expect on that? Do you listen to the UK DnB artists or do you see Downpour as existing outside the scene?
I thought the Boymerang stuff was great. I think it's a natural progression for artists to drop their guitars and pick up samplers. From what I hear, Graham Sutton drop himself to distraction on 'Hex,' so what better antidote to go out to some clubs and start enjoying music again.

Hood just played at Terrastock recently, how did that go?
Terrastock was great. We got a good reaction off the crowd, we played songs from all Hood eras -- we're almost like a tribute band these days! Plus new ones as well. We only stayed at Terrastock a few hours because we were touring Germany the following week but we had a good time.

On the new album there's a track called "Hood is finished." This bothers me. What's the future have in store for Hood?
That was just frustration at the state of the band during that period. I don't really think there's that much interest in what we do these days. There's no point in dragging on forever, but for the moment we are just continuing to record as normal. There will be a 7" on Blue Sanct Musak early next year and we're recording a single and an album for Domino. Expect the last two Hood LP's to be re-released stateside through Slumberland at some point.