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- Active: '90s, 2000s
- Genres: Rock
- Instrument: Musician, Main Performer Representative Album: "Faster Than You Think"
Biography
Reclusive ex-surfer and electronica wunderkind Hoagland Hill manufactures a signature, progressive sound milieu that out-samples and out-texturizes some of the highest-fidelity music sculptors around.Born in Whittier, CA, in 1960 to an archaeologist and a statistician, Hill grew up in Malibu and received, at one point, a law degree from the University of Washington. He dabbled in satellite law, world environment issues, and novel writing before returning soundly and exclusively to his true love: his home studio. His experience as a musician was prodigious and varied: as an early-'80s club musician he played "heavily amplified hand-built acoustic instruments" with Arnold Dreyblatt's Orchestra of Excited Strings (and was featured on ADOES album Nodal Excitation). 1984 found him playing bass with the proto-industrial/punk L.A. band the Blue Daisies, appearing on their much-coveted collector's album Wilt. During his burgeoning experimental jazz era, Hoagland collaborated with Kubist Tier on a sax turn, then performed with the torchy Hi-Beams in the cabaret venue, backing Sally Norvell on piano. During his Seattle stint, Hill played bass, keys, winds, and bells with club favorite Naught, appearing on the bootleg Keeper All for One and One for Naught in 1986. Some of his best work arguably evolved in Europe while working as a street musician (with L.A. theater actor and director Ron Campbell), then touring extensively with Kid Congo and Sally Norvell in the Congo Norvell rock cabaret.
His other life -- involving playing "in" rather than playing "out" -- includes hard-won top status in L.A. as an original, if not jubilantly postmodern, theater composer. L.A. Weekly Theater Critics Award has routinely nominated Hoagie's scores for short plays, contemporary Shakespeare productions, and high-profile 99-seat works; most notably, his moodily underground, industrial score for Stanislav Witkiewitz' Madman and the Nun (directed by Ron Campbell, 1999) received the most accolades for the generally widely acclaimed production. He grabbed the reins and set the standard as original musical director for Tim Robbins' Actors Gang acting studio out of Hollywood in the mid-'80s and continues to be an in-demand craftsman, known throughout Tinsel Town and beyond as a class-act artisan, romancing the occasionally less-than-glimmering diamond that is L.A. theater.
Solo projects that demonstrate the range and marriageability of technology and art are Hill's playground these days. Album projects conceived, composed, performed, and mixed by Hill abound, each one outshining the last in terms of their musicality and thematic verve. Hill's project monikers and their attendant album projects demonstrate a love of language and a generously playful sensibility: he's also gone by the studio names Ogolalla Cabal (album: Scarecrows, Clowns, and One-Eyed Gods), Truth Pageant (Quirks, Quarks, Quakes, and Quacks), and Juxtaposeur (Easy Listening for Difficult People). Hill's studio project and Seamonster CD issue, Faster Than You Think, is his best-produced and most cleanly realized of the archive; a marketable and eminently listenable disc already collected by marveling fellow musicians. ~ Reveka Byrkit, All Music Guide
