Paris-dwelling DJ and producer Fetisch, who makes up one half of Terranova with the Berlin-based house and techno-oriented artist &ME, could no doubt spin a yarn or two about pivotal events in the history of club culture. If you're looking for someone who's been there, done that, and has all the scars to prove it, Fetisch is your man. He's spun records at Danceteria and Tunnel in New York; recorded at Conny Plank's legendary Cologne studio; found himself at the epicenter of the original illegal rave boom in England; and worked with Manuel Göttsching, Tricky, and Ari-up from the Slits. Their latest record even features a bizarre cameo from German horror and exploitation actor Udo Kier. It's clearly a career that bears no particular focus or shape, with the many-sided tracks on Hotel Amour spinning off from the all-embracing approach Fetisch has gleefully wallowed in over the years.
As such, this is a record with a handful of standout songs struggling and straining against one another after being crammed into the standard album format. It feels like a collection of tracks screaming for individual attention, like precocious children all holding their hands up at the same time in class. The strength of Terranova's vocal collaborators are the primary cause of that, with Fetisch and &ME drawing on some fiercely individual talent. Copenhagen-based singer Tomas Høffding leaves a sizable imprint, in particular on "Question Mark", which is positioned somewhere between the blubstep croon of Jamie Woon and Antony Hegarty's work with Hercules and Love Affair. Elsewhere, the soft vocal intonations of Khan lend Hotel Amour the aura of post-rave comedown, particularly on the blissfully understated "So Strong".
The stylistic thrust of this album is caught somewhere between the current and the deep past, with shades of modern pop production layered over the stripped-back grooves of vintage house. There aren't too many straightforward club bangers here, but there are a few old school thrills to be derived from the undulating TB-303 bass ripples of "I Want to Go Out" and "By My Side". But taking such an unabashedly retro approach on certain tracks feels jarring when Terranova strive to be forward-thinking elsewhere. "Take My Hand", the standout here, is all coarse, sputtering rhythms, clattering tin-pot drums, and heavily dubbed-out vocals. The closing "Prayer", featuring Kier's glowering spoken-word extracts and a straight-down-the-line piece of torch singing from German vocalist Nicolette Krebitz, is driven by the same kind of ambition DJ Hell was stirring up on his outstanding 2009 album Teufelswerk.
But those tracks are mostly anomalies, with too much of Hotel Amour sinking into territory that has been heavily mined in recent times. Billie Ray Martin gives an impressively robust vocal performance on "Make Me Feel", but there's nothing in the limp backing that elevates it beyond the bevy of pallid trip-hop clones that clutched hard to the coattails of Massive Attack's Blue Lines 20 years ago. There's been a deluge of producers striving hard to work a darker edge into their material over the past decade, and it feels like it will take something very special to stand out in a marketplace bursting at the seems with alleyway-dwelling artists scrambling to translate early-morning post-ecstasy cityscapes into song. This isn't that record, but in "Take My Hand" and "Prayer", there is a way out of the gloom, providing some distance from the genre mimicry it ducks into elsewhere.
