Hive
Devious Methods

"When we were young it was a whole different nonsense"

In Passione e ideologia from 1960, Pier Paolo Pasolini spoke about the relationship with past works whose memory had been lost over time and how their value "may require an effort of empathy to be appreciated, assuming that this intrinsic value ever existed"*. In my search for musical retro to use as background when writing essays that no one will read, tidying rooms that no one-night adventurer will ever see (I've had a girlfriend long enough for her to get used to the mess), and cooking food my family won't appreciate (but will definitely eat), I happen to come across some nice records. Those with some intrinsic value that requires little empathy to be appreciated and are the work of people that it's a bit sad to see disappear into anonymity. Devious Methods (1998) by Hive is one of these.

It's not a fresh and innovative masterpiece: it’s drum and bass terribly (terribly) out of fashion for a good fifteen years, but it still makes a good impression. In short, it's a good album.

• The perks. The album rocks. And without abusing aggressive beats and ignorant samples: it's a varied and intelligent electronic mix that always keeps the listener's attention alive and doesn't get lost in the typical tedious blather of certain techno. It's an album that would once have been called "colorful", "full of energy", and "always varied", just like its cover that balances between hip-hop, new age, and Tekken 3. And hip-hop is clearly the environment from which Hive hails (who worked(?) in San Francisco but is obviously English and has only made one other album aside from various collaborations), so much so that even in the noisiest track, we find reflective moments reminiscent of that instrumental hip-hop which was gaining solid self-awareness in those years.
• The drawbacks of this record are that it is terribly a child of its time. The clearest example of this is those samples thrown in everywhere of people talking, which become really boring after a while. [A small erudite digression: it is no coincidence that it's a trend of the '90s, the decade when young people realized that rap rocked, and therefore everywhere you had to have people randomly talking. In 1994, Korn, who some saw as the great promise of the future rock (poor guys) talked a lot between songs. By 2000, Linkin Park had already stopped, and they were the tough guys on the parish playground with gel, spray cans, and silver Nikes, so if there was something cool around, they had to do it. Why wasn't it cool anymore? I like to think it was the fault of two bands in particular].

So, to summarize: Devious Methods is a good album, it was absolutely inevitable that its author doesn't make much more noise around, and I would recommend this album not only to enthusiasts but also to the curious.

(*he might not have said it)