Before Modeselektor toured with Radiohead on the heels of their Happy Birthday! and Apparat found acclaim for his stargazing electro dream-pop, there existed an early incarnation of Moderat. Back in 2002, Modeselektor's Sebastian Szary and Gernot Bronsert linked up with Sascha Ring (Apparat) to lay down a collaborative full-length and, gently put, it didn't work out. The trio found the recording process so personally damaging they named the resulting material (which, tellingly, became an EP) Auf Kosten der Gesundheit ("At the Cost of Health"). Naturally it didn't seem like they'd be getting back together anytime soon.
For whatever reason, the guys decided to give it another shot (apparently a chance encounter at the Berlin-Mitte City Pool sparked the reunion). Still, on paper the collaboration doesn't seem like a cakewalk, mainly because the two acts don't share much stylistic common ground. Modeselektor's music is built on a combination of glitch, electro, and hip-hop thump and it's all about thrust and action-- the art of dropping heavy bass and making people go apeshit in a club. Apparat, meanwhile, tends to look inward. He utilizes more conventional pop structures that are wrapped in shoegaze synths and layers of atmosphere for something closer akin to what M83 is doing these days.
Of course, it's this aesthetic dissimilarity that makes the record an exciting prospect. And the good news is that (for the most part) they pulled it off. Long stretches of Moderat find the three producers locked into a healthy creative symbiosis that accentuates the best parts of their individual styles. The record's best tracks, like first single "A New Error", illustrate the balance. It bounces along with the muscular energy we expect out of Modeselektor without ignoring the warm astral qualities of an Apparat song. Others, such as standout "Seamonkey", pull off the same feat with even more complexity. The song opens with a minute-plus of nasty, walloping bass and just when you start to wonder if that's all there is, it unfurls into something much more intricate.
Moderat is generous with moments like this-- tracks gather steam and reveal fresh layers as they move forward-- and they're what make the record a captivating listen. This is especially true of its more robust pieces. What opens as a minimal synth sequence on "Les Grandes Marches" becomes a vigorous beat assault by song's end. "Nr. 22"-- arguably the record's finest cut and the best take on your standard build-and-release techno I've heard in awhile-- starts out all silent and whispery before a setting loose a hyperactive-synth and staccato-drum pattern sure to strip paint off the walls of clubs from Berlin to Brooklyn.
Such club-ready moments split time with a variety of other styles ranging from gentle atmospheric numbers to grime-inflected pop tracks. Most of them are winners. Ring takes up vocal duties on "Rusty Nails" and "Out of Sight", a pair that most closely resembles his breakout work with 2007's Walls. The difference here is that the shoegaze/dream-pop structures that dominated that album are swapped out for stabs at dubstep. This might have came across as disingenuous trend-jacking on lesser material, but Moderat's savvy enough to incorporate the form in such a way that adds their own spin to it. (Even if, yeah, the beats do owe a lot to Burial.)
The stretch between "Slow Match" and "Sick with It"-- where Modeselektor try their hand at a few dancehall cuts-- is the only shaky portion of the album and could have easily been left on the cutting-room floor. And that's the other thing: the record is too long. (Sandwiched between the reggae numbers are the mostly "meh" "3 Minutes of" and "Nasty Silence".) For one reason or another, Modeselektor seem unwilling to trim the fat (read any review of Happy Birthday! and the central criticism is always length) and here again, are a handful of just-okay songs that probably should have been lopped off. Cut some of them and you've got a great record instead of just a darn good one.
