THE DECLINING WINTER - Goodbye Minnesota

And so, a year after his brother Chris's new project – Bracken – it's time for the full-length debut from Richard Adams, the other founding half of Hood, a band whose future in the form we've known it now hangs under more than one question mark, given its by-now prolonged silence and the considerable activity of the Adams brothers on other fronts.

No need to worry, though, for those who loved the great Leeds band, since, as already shown on Bracken's album, its artistic legacy isn't in danger of being scattered but is actually being multiplied, simply carrying on under different names, with the two brothers continuing to work side by side, moreover on not dissimilar foundations, albeit with different stylistic approaches.

While Chris signed to Anticon to admirably continue the rhythmic decompositions and claustrophobic urban landscapes of Hood's later albums, following a 7" titled "The Future Sound Of Hip Hop Parts 1 & 2", Richard launches The Declining Winter on the small but enterprising Irish label Rusted Rail, sticking firmly to the path traced by the band, starting with the album's visual presentation, which comes in an elegant recycled-paper sleeve adorned with the familiar typewriter typeface and a desolate landscape image. The similarities, of course, don't stop at the surface, since "Goodbye Minnesota" is nothing less than one of the possible evolutionary paths of "Outside Closer", developing above all its oblique atmospheres and temporal suspensions in tracks that weave together folk and electronics and, through their many layers, leave a constant sense of emptiness and distance.

Flanked by his brother Chris and by Chris Cole (Manyfingers), on this first "solo" effort Richard Adams returns to immerse himself in a hypnotic melancholy, variously expressed through residual hip-hop abstractions, gloomy melodies and a fragmented dub pulse, cut through now by simple guitar notes, now by mutant post-rock echoes. The result is a disorienting work that eludes any neat classification and essentially splits into two parts: the first rougher and more electric, the second calmer and more contemplative.

In the first part, urban atmospheres and a studied vocal disarray prevail, hinting at harsh, enveloping melodies pervaded by shadowy rhythms and grimy electric inserts. The result is a set of very direct tracks with a firmly claustrophobic stride, such as "Summer Turns To Hurt", "We Used To Read Books" and the spectral "Oh God C'mon"; alongside them, though, there are already glimpses of unusual solemnity and lightness ("To Know Gospel"), rendered in the most classic Hood style on the instrumental "Yorkcitythree", where a steady underlying melody is overlaid with a myriad of shimmering electronic ripples.

In the second part, by contrast, basslines and deep rhythms thin out, giving way to nocturnal slowness and softer melodies that sketch out ethereal, disorienting rural landscapes, embellished by gentle guitar arpeggios, subterranean distortions and near-ambient rarefactions, culminating in the romanticism of the closing title track.

Throughout the album, Richard Adams nonetheless stays true to his well-established artistic signature, crafting music built from fragments, from polychrome slides juxtaposed to form a shifting patchwork that keeps reshuffling its own tiles, offering a different overall picture each time.

Although "Goodbye Minnesota" brings together all the elements of the Adams brothers' recent work, it's the way they're reshuffled that makes this album worth attention, marking a further stage in the development of a band in a prolonged dormant phase, yet more alive than ever.

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07/05/2008