Arpanet: Quantum Transposition LP

‘Quantum Transposition’ is part of an utterly seminal trilogy of Arpanet albums, along with ‘Wireless Internet’ (2002) and ‘Inertial Frame’ (2006), that pointed to a new high water mark of visionary Detroit sci-fi music at the start of this century. Where ‘Wireless Internet’ still contained club-ready traces of the electro torque that defined Gerald Donald’s preceding Dopplereffekt classix, ‘Quantum Transposition’ abstracted club music to model his fascinations with quantum physics in a breathtaking form that would come to inform his work for nearly decades since, holding a very special place in the cult imagination of electronic music. Arpanet would give a 2nd life to ‘80s electro’s obsession with the future, but with a proper darkside slant and angular funk keenly familiar to Detroit. In it, club music’s structures are reduced to essentials, funky enough to dance to, but also detailed and spatialized for a non-more-absorbing headphone experience, metaphorically enacting ideas on duality in the process. When taken in the context of pulpier sci-fi and the phenomena of electro in Detroit, you’d be a prick to sniff at the results, which have simply never been bettered for their sheer sensuality, imagination and craft. No need to play favourites here; it’s all solid gold, and no doubt an album that demands to be heard from start to end as one lot, while DJs will certainly find weapons secreted in its beguiling folds and breaker-sparking metric convolutions.