In the mid-nineties, I spent many a late night procrastinating on the web instead of working on whatever term paper I needed to finish. Haujobb’s Solutions For a Small Planet was my soundtrack for many of those evenings. There is something magical about this album that, when combined with too many cups of coffee and the glow of a computer monitor, could make it feel like you were just a few clicks away from being dragged into some futuristic H4X0R conspiracy.

Anyone who has read (or partially read, i.e. me) Neil Stephenson’s Snow Crash will automatically recognize the sounds from their speakers, which seem like they were scored to go hand-in-hand with the 90s Cyber-Punk epic. Cold, throbbing rhythms that play more like Film Noir than music, really.

Formed in the early 90s, the German group’s name references (not surprisingly) a German translation of the term “skin job”, from Blade Runner. Haujobb spent most of the 90s perfecting a sound that bridged both EBM and IDM. While usually lumped in with the Industrial movement, Haujobb had much more in common with groups like Autechre than 90s era Front Line Assembly. I still hold 1996′s Solutions for a Small Planet as the last true, bonafied industrial-dance classic of the 90s… before things really took a turn for the worse.

Until a few months ago, I had not listened to this album in almost a decade. I was incredibly surprised by how well it still holds  up and just how relevant it still sounds. This is the sort of album that transcends its tag of “industrial” and is a must listen for all electronic music fans and apocalyptic fetishists alike.

Haujobb – Solutions For a Small Planet