Paul Robb is no media imperialist. His baseball cap, well-worn Doc Martins and well-groomed goatee would render him a nameless face in any crowd of urban night-night-crawlers. Yet, as he puffs on a thick stogie and paces meditatively back and forth along the aging wooden floorboards of his Northeast Minneapolis studio, the 33-year old producer and a composer unwittingly performs a comic send-up of the American corporate megalomaniac.

"Most of my neighbors are Republicans," he says, smirking through a cloud of cigar smoke. Though he spends much of his time here at the headquarters of Hakatak International, Robb lives with his wife and two young sons in a conservative, upper-middle class sector of St. Paul. "When I tell them (neighbors) what I do for a living, I don’t think they quite get it, I might as well be saying I’m an astronaut."

There’s not much chance that right-leaning St. Paul home-owners ever will take notice of Hakatak, an upstart label devoted to techno, industrial and experimental electronic music, founded by Robb earlier this year. Odds are only slightly better that the conservative set could identify Robb as a former member of Information Society, an 80’s post-new-wave phenom that bloomed in the Twin Cities and spent eight years in New York riding the club-ready rails of international dance music.

"It was a great time to be doing what we were doing, and it was so strange for it to be us, these geeky white kids from Minnesota-that made it all the more sweet."

INSOC peaked in 1988 and’89, scoring top-ten Billboard hits with "What’s On Your Mind (Pure Energy)" and "walking Away" and building fan bases in South America, Scandinavia, and continental Europe-"everywhere but England. The English considered us to be warmed over Depeche Mode, Erasure or New Order."

Three years ago, Robb finally decided to call it quits and relocate to the Twin Cities. Things had been coming to a head with our whole business structure-dissatisfaction with Tommy Boy (Records), with Warner Brothers, with our booking agent, lots of things."

Robb quietly nods his head in time as a pair of studio monitors project a rich, lulling, trip-hop soundscape. Slinky Middle eastern synth phrases coil around a lazy, buttery bassline like a sonic python, squeezing out a dark and echoey female vocal. The music is from brother Sun-Sister Moon, a recently completed collaboration between Robb and local singer-songwriter Barb Cohen (the two attended Irondale High School together), scheduled for release in early 1997.

"One of my goals was to make singable songs," Robb says of his new project. Indeed the fluid arrangements surrounding Cohen’s sinewy throat work invent and revisit melodies that warmly invite audience participation. "These are songs with verses and choruses-I’m a big fan of the pop-song format."

Even so, radio-friendly ear candy is not where Robb’s head is at. His current musical vision is found in Hakatak’s first official release, in stores this month. A full length collection of his own "100 percent non-organic" compositions, Skullbuggery is the debut album by Think Tank, Robb’s nom d’ artiste. Littered with dynamic drum tracks and all manner of samples, the record weaves the supremely danceable ethics of techno with the hard-edged, mechanical cynicism of contemporary industrial.

"the problem with a lot of techno is it’s not funky enough." Robb claims. "This is what I hate," he says, pounding his palm robotically on the table-thud, thud, thud-in mockery of the classic, repetitive four-count bass thump. "That’s OK for about five or 10 minutes, then I just get bored.

"There’s been a pretty healthy convergence of techno and industrial." He goes on, citing the recent work of Meat Beat Manifesto. Chemical Brothers, Underworld and orbital are among his favorite cutting-edge artists who are breathing more life into the electronically commanded realm of club tracks. "that’s one of the things we’re trying to do with Hakatak, kind of a cross-pollination of club genres. Industrial-dance is coming on a lot stronger now. For a while, industrial music was just overwrought with tons of really heavy guitar, kind of like Metallica with a drum machine."

The conversation turns to Trent Reznor of Nine Inch nails, perhaps the most recognizable and commercially successful industrial artist to date. "I hate his songs but he’s an incredible producer," Robb says. "Right after Nine inch Nails hit, you saw all kinds of labels grabbing up their industrial-dance acts-Stabbing Westward, gravity Kills, and so on."

In releasing the Think Tank album and jumping back into the dance record pool, Robb has no delusions of getting rich off the current resurgence of club music. "(Think Tank) is intended to be underground," he assures. "it’s never going to be more than that. It’s a good introduction for people to the Hakatak label as a whole." Future Hakatak plans include an album from Savage Aural Hotbed and a new act called Dissonance.

In addition, Robb and his hakatak cohort, Rachel Joyce, daydream about starting a club night somewhere in Minneapolis, hoping to give more experimental underground and trip-Hop sounds a venue. One persistent obstacle , he says, for anyone hoping to spin new styles, is the collective ego of club DJs who hold fast to their established niches.

A browse through the hakatak web-site offers a more complete insight into the ideology behind the label and its future plans. Robb’s career with Information Society, along with his less-glamorous-but-better-paying work scoring episodes of The Real World and road rules for MTV Europe, have led him to some pointed conclusions about the music industry. Having modestly cracked Billboard’s Top 100 seven times, he’s hoping to make a fresh start with even fresher possibilities.