Hume | tl

Hume is an experimental rock band from Washington, DC consisting of Britton Powell, Wilson Ward, Peter Tran, and Joey Doubek.

Hume kicked off in 2005, 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 and guitarist, Christian Brady (both of Mass Movement of the Moth). 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 transplendent bliss-outs. .