We're not feeling any love. At all. 0/10

It is entirely impossible to talk about Arp?s ?In Light? without making immediate comparisons to Krautrock. For starters, the album cover art is a close imitation of Harmonia?s ?Deluxe.? From there, the music does little to distinguish itself from Harmonia and their contemporaries. In all seriousness, this album tries very hard to sound like it was produced in Germany in the early 70s. From the instruments, to the song structures, to the rhythms, everything on this album feels lifted from somewhere else.

Plenty of groups incorporate elements of Krautrock into their music, but still manage to inhabit their own sonic territory. Arp, it seems, was not able to make that creative leap. There are moments, or entire songs that seem pilfered from elsewhere. I spent a fair amount of time shuffling though tracks by Harmonia, Neu, and Kraftwerk just to make sure I wasn?t imagining things, but alas, Arp is a pretty liberal borrower. Easiest to notice are the rhythms and synthesizers on the album, which sound as if they were directly taken from those old groups. Furthermore, entire riffs are co-opted. Listen to Arp?s ?Potentialities II? and Harmonia?s ?Notre Dame? (coincidentally, or not so coincidentally, also from ?Deluxe?) side-by-side and I think you?ll get the general idea.

Imitation may be the best form of flattery, but it seems pretty foolish to copy music that is so distinctive and so tied to a particular time and place. If you already have Neu, early Kraftwerk, and Harmonia records in your musical library, there is really no reason to own this album. And if you don?t have any of those albums, well, maybe you should. Just don?t waste your time with this derivative crap. -- Matt Blackall (31 October, 2007)