Episode 16 –Robert Hood - One Touch

It’s the early 1990s, and electronic music producer, Robert Hood, and his peer, Jeff Mills, regularly call each other on the phone to share the music that they are each making. During one of these calls, Mills tells Hood that the tracks that Hood is producing, which are relatively sparse and tend to loop one sound sequence repeatedly, have a minimalist signature that he can call his own. While Hood knows that the techno he is producing is different, he also insists on contextualising his output within that of a throng of new producers, who he believes are also making minimal techno. This is a collective phenomenon that Hood describes as the minimal nation rising. It is through this description that Hood inadvertently speaks the words that become the title of his forthcoming album, a release that neither Mills nor Hood could have realized, would go on to become immortalised in the origins of minimal techno. In creating the Minimal Nation album, which includes the track, “One Touch”, Hood materialises his desire to return techno to its bare, essential components, which reflect its purity and humanity.