Hume kicked off five years ago, the constantly metamorphosing product of guitarist/bassist/composer Britton Powell’s high school philosophy class daydreams and basement-recording sessions.
In these early days, Hume was hard to pin down. One minute it was a solo-project, the next it was a group of free-form improvisers, then a string quartet, and finally a full-fledged band performing expansive prog-rock in a giant octopus-shaped sculpture. Whatever was going on, it was always interesting. The last touring line-up of the group featured two drummers, two basses, and three saxophones performing a single 30-minute composition that Powell wrote during a six-month trip to India.
But somewhere during the last two years, Powell decided that the constant line-up changes were not getting him where he wanted to go.
Inspired in equal parts by James Brown’s touring band and the prog-rock titans of yesteryear, Powell decided that it was time to buckle-down and get tight. He rallied the heads together–recruiting drummer and long time collaborator Wilson Kemp (Macaw), bassist/multi-instrumentalist Joey Doubek (Mass Movement of the Moth) and guitarist, Peter Tran . Months of rehearsals followed. The group dug in deep, cloistering themselves in a group house basement for rigorous practice sessions—trying to find the balance between composition and spontaneity, to figure out how to ride knotty prog-riffs into deep trasnplendent bliss-outs.
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