Hint is a man who walks to beat of his own drum. Literally though, he doesn’t walk very far, because he makes his music in a Portakabin you see, which is quite small, so he just kind of paces up and down a lot. Musically though, he is far from confined to such a small space, as he makes the sounds of what he sees when he looks out the window. These are the sounds of the rural English countryside, dragged inside the Portakabin, and subjected to hip hop, funk, electronica, folk, post rock and soul.
These are simple pleasures. These are the sounds of ruralbeat.
These are the sounds of Hint’s debut album.

After a couple of releases on Deep Water Recordings Hint moved to Bristol based Hombre Records early 2002, who, via their collaboration with Ninja Tune, have released four Hint EPs over the last year. These releases have seen our boy Hint compared to a startling array of artists from Lemon Jelly and Penguin Café Orchestra, to The Beach Boys meets The Beta Band.

Constructed over the space of a year ‘Portakabin Fever’ was made on the barest of studio set ups, with Hint’s trusty MPC joined by his own musical talents on guitar, bass, and keyboards. Melody, heart, soul, humour and a little bit of magic are the currency in Hint’s world, where eleven tracks of pastoral atmospheres and beguiling electronica are the order of the day.

Don’t be fooled by the still waters of gentle melody though. The man clearly has an ear for a tune, but look a little closer and you’ll see that Hint has many intricacies and deeper tides of broken beats and fascinating rhythm.