Robert Hood - Motor: Nighttime World 3 - 3xLP+CD

Robert Hood is techno's undisputed minimal master, but previous instalments of Nighttime World - especially the jazz-fuelled inaugural release in 1995 on Cheap - have afforded him the opportunity to go off script and indulge his conceptual whims. Will he do the same again on Motor? The answer is a resounding yes. Inspired by Julien Temple's 2010 documentary Requiem For Detroit?, which charts the fall and decline of America's former car manufacturing hub, the album is full of references to the effects of man's interaction with technology. If Kraftwerk's shimmering Man Machine was a testament to the benefits of humans harnessing technology, then Motor is the gloomy riposte, emerging from the rubble of a shattered metropolis to tell this sad but compelling tale and crucially, to offer some hope for the future.