The choice of then 80-year-old science fiction artist David A. Hardy – who has illustrated work by everyone from cranky British astronomer Patrick Moore to Hawkwind – to produce the cover art for this LP is apt. As is the almost abstract simplicity of the artwork: a gas giant, a moon, a triangular spaceship, and deep space behind them. Like this work, Texan producer Gerard Hanson – whether making techno as Convextion or electro as E.R.P. – balances reduction to the simplest geometrical elements with a sense of the enduring romanticism of science fiction dreams. 2845 constantly evokes other broad-vista dance music space explorers: throughout the eight long tracks you will hear riffs and tones reminiscent of Larry Heard, of Spacetime Continuum, of early Biosphere (there’s a certain reassuring shipboard computer parp which recalls his 1993 “Baby Interphase”), of late Drexciya (the 16-minute opener here, “New Horizon”, is a distant relation to “Cascading Celestial Giants” from Grava 4). But it’s never beholden to them – rather, it taps into the same inspiration. To put it simply: this is close to the platonic ideal of techno as space music.