Moodswings Maven Trades Synthesizers for the Hang
James Hood Playing Hang on Echoes
One of my favorite albums of the 21st century remains the CD Horizontal by Moodswings. It was a perfect CD of ambient expanses, melodically tuned and atmospherically vast. The man behind that album was James Hood. After a lifetime in music, including playing drums with The Pretenders, he disappeared. Twelve years later, he’s back with a new double CD called Ceremony and a new instrument called the Hang. The Hang is a metal percussion instrument that looks like a flying saucer with dents. Invented in 2000 by Felix Rohner and Sabina Schärer, the creators call it a sound sculpture. Don’t you dare call it a drum. They have stopped producing them, making the instrument rare. James Hood has three of them. 
It’s a seductive instrument in form and sound, with a space age design and sonorous tones. Jame Hood has become addicted to the Hang and he’s unplugged to make an “almost” pure hang drum recording on Ceremony . I wrote the liner notes for the album, which has just been released. Hear James Hood talk about his Hang epiphany tonight on Echoes.
John Diliberto (((echoes)))
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