Robert Hood is one of the foremost pioneers of minimal techno. His 1994 classic Minimal Nation sucked all the human warmth out of disco like a sterilized vacuum tube; all that was left was a profoundly lonely echosphere of clicks, thumps and senseless, pistonlike firings. The desolation was a reflection of Detroit itself, in all of its rusting, mechanized isolation, and it made for an eerily resonant document of a burgeoning scene.

Omega, Hood's latest, takes this sensibility to its logical extreme: The record is based loosely around the classic sci-fi cult flick Omega Man, in which only one man remains left on a deserted, post-apocalyptic earth. The film is a good conceptual match for Hood's brand of techno; there is an eerie, arid stillness here, even as it propels forward blankly. Songs like "The Plague (Cleansing Maneuvers)" are little more than hollow depth charges ringing out into miles of yawning empty space — the sense of total isolation is profound, and it worms under your skin in a profoundly insinuating way. There is a gently lulling sense of pattern without human direction here, like hearing a copy machine whirr away endlessly at a 5,000-page document in the next room.

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