Floorplan: A spiritual encounter

Fun perhaps, but in Floorplan’s world, it’s fun with a message – and ‘Victorious’ is brimming with songs that are openly religious. There’s ‘The Heavens & The Earth’, for instance, which finds Lyric and Robert quoting from the Book of Genesis, or ‘He Can Save You’, which features spectral samples of what sounds like a revival meeting. Robert jumps at the word. “Revival –that’s exactly it!” he exclaims. “I don’t necessarily want to do gospel house, but I do want to bring a revival to the club. I want to bring what we experience on Sunday morning, at a church in inner-city Detroit, to the dancefloor.” He elaborates, striving to make the connection explicit. “I can remember when I was a kid seeing my grandmother playing the tambourine in church and she was catching the Holy Spirit. I’d be thinking, ‘What is she on?’ She would be in another world, but she would beat that tambourine like you’ve never seen before – she would tear it to pieces. Disco, house, and even techno are interwoven into that. It’s that shouting; it’s that dirty-bottomed foot, hitting the floor. That’s the kind of feeling we’re trying to bring to the club.’

He pauses to think about the implications of that feeling. “I think that when people listen to our music or hear us play, they’re getting a spiritual encounter, one that can start people digging into the world of God. We are agents of change; the music is the catalyst.”

Of course, not everybody in the club is looking for that form of encounter, exactly – and in Hood’s view, that’s OK. "When I’m DJing, I’m ministering, but not in any kind of preaching, condemning way. It’s the whole ‘You may be black, you may be white; you may be Jew or gentile’ thing. It’s universal. I don’t want to come off as a dogmatic preacher, like ‘If you don’t follow these rules and regulations, you’re going to die and go to hell.’ It’s not about that at all. I’m basically preaching a message of freedom. We may not know we are free, but I am free and you are free. That’s largely it, really.”

Lyric nods her head in agreement. "There’s a message to the music I’m playing,” she says. “And just by expressing myself, by being free, that’s a big part of it.” But as she sees it, half the fun of being a part of Floorplan is getting the opportunity to work with her father. “In Alabama, most children go deer hunting or fishing with their dad,” she says. “But I get to do this – produce music, travel all over the world and play music – with my dad. And I know that what we’re doing here is a little different than most fathers and daughters. It’s very special and rare.”