Robert Hood's 1999 Classic "Psychic / Pole Position" Gets Vinyl Remaster Treatment

M-Plant's Perpetual Masters series has spent 2026 pushing one remastered track per week from Robert Hood's deep catalogue into digital circulation. Now the series has a vinyl date: "Psychic / Pole Position," Hood's 1999 two-tracker, lands on wax April 17 as MPM50, carrying the series to its fiftieth release.

The upgrade is not cosmetic. For DJs playing the original on modern club rigs, a 25-year-old master presents real translation problems: low end that was tight by late-90s pressing standards reads differently through contemporary subwoofers, and the transient detail in the upper frequencies that gives Hood's stripped percussion its punch can get buried or brittle depending on the system. Heckmann's work throughout the Perpetual Masters series targets exactly those variables: tighter kick weight, sharper high-end clarity, and headroom that lets the track sit properly in a mix without the groove and dynamics that define the original getting squeezed out. The result is a record that can sit next to a 2024 production without conceding anything for its age.

The record itself justifies the effort. By 1999, Hood had spent five years codifying the approach he'd established with "Minimal Nation" (1994) and sharpened through releases like "Internal Empire," which contained the track "Minus" that Richie Hawtin later named his own label after. Where the early-decade work set the blueprint, Hood's late-90s material applied it with deliberate economy. "Psychic / Pole Position" runs on sparse analogue percussion and hypnotic repetition, built for club utility with nothing extraneous. No announced breakdown, no telegraphed payoff. The music is the function, which is precisely why it still programs well.

Thomas Heckmann brings matching credentials to the mastering chair. The Mainz-based producer has been working in techno since 1991, when his debut as Exit 100 on Force Inc made him one of the earliest German producers working explicitly in the Underground Resistance and +8 tradition. He founded Trope Recordings in 1993 and built a parallel reputation through his Drax project during the same years European clubs were absorbing Detroit's influence in real time. His work across the Perpetual Masters series now spans Hood's full archival range, from the 1992 Toxin EP remaster to the 2002 Floorplan-era "Shop / Learn," and the Detroit-to-Germany axis in this collaboration is not incidental.

The Perpetual Masters functions less like a nostalgia project and more like a structured maintenance program. The series launched in 2009 and has moved through M-Plant's back catalogue in waves, making out-of-print and worn-copy material playable again across vinyl, digital, and streaming. The 2026 cadence of one digital track per week is its most systematic push to date, with selected titles then graduating to physical release. "Psychic / Pole Position" is one of those selections, a record long out of active circulation now returned to the crates.

For collectors, MPM50 is a clean pressing of a 12" that has long moved at premium prices in its original form. For the DJs who never had access to it, it is the minimalist blueprint made serviceable for today's sound systems, which is the point the Perpetual Masters series has been making, one remaster at a time, since its inception.