RVNG Intl. and Freedom to Spend have announced that they’ll be releasing a previously unheard album from ambient pioneer Ernest Hood. Back to the Woodlands is due out November 11. The album collects previously-unreleased material recorded between 1972 and 1982—the same period documented on Hood’s celebrated 1975 album Neighborhoods.
The two labels have also shared a new music video for the Back to the Woodlands song “Bedroom of the Absent Child.” Directed by Contagious Yawns, the video features grainy shots of various landscapes with ghostly cars and figures fading in and out of frame. Watch it below.
Ernest Hood got his start as a jazz guitarist, performing with his brother Bill Hood throughout the 1940s. During this period, a case of polio forced him to use a wheelchair and left him unable to play the guitar. He went on to pick up the zither, working with field recordings and synthesizers throughout the 1950s. His debut album Neighborhoods was self-released in 1975 with a small run of private-press vinyl records. The album was eventually rediscovered by RVNG Intl. and Freedom to Spend, who reissued it in late 2019.
See where Neighborhoods ended up on Pitchfork’s list of “The 50 Best Ambient Albums of All Time.”