James Hood Hanging on a Hang

Moodswings Maven Trades Synthesizers for the Hang

James Hood Playing Hang on Echoes

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.  CeremonyIt’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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