MODESELEKTOR - Monkeytown

Appetite comes with eating: a proverb well known to the omnivorous and increasingly uncategorizable Gernot Bronsert and Sebastian Szary, sons of the Berlin electro scene better known by the name  Modeselektor. Since the mid-90s they've been mixing records to create their own sonic scenarios, never shying away from collaborations and winning over time the backing of major names in the music biz. The German duo love delighting their audience by shuffling the deck: “Monkeytown” is the sublimation of this attitude, an album containing eleven tracks representing as many digressions on the theme of “where electronic music stands today”, one of those works that can be appreciated even by those who don't usually frequent the paths leading to the dancefloor.

It opens with the sweetened Dubstep of “Blue Clouds”, and from there countless splinters shoot off in the most disparate directions. The preservation of their roots is guaranteed by the superb techno expressed first in “Evil Twin” and later in “German Clap”, where it hybridizes with light funk digressions. But the whole of “Monkeytown” is a constant hopping between subgenres, also reserving the right amount of space for black-oriented ones, see the hip-hop drifts of “Pretentious Friends” and the less successful “Humanized”, and the excellent fusion with r&b of “Berlin” (ironic that a track with this title has nothing to do with techno), enriched by the presence of Miss Platnum.

Less decisive is the contribution of Apparat, who fails to get the closing “War Cry” off the ground, just as the consecutive “Grillwalker” and “Green Light Go” essentially spin their wheels. But the main talking point of the whole album, its blessing and curse, is the presence of Thom Yorke, who leaves such a mark on “Shipwreck” and “This” that they end up sounding like two (albeit extraordinary) outtakes from “The King Of Limbs“. These are the tracks that could win the German duo mainstream appeal, even as they retain very little of the Modeselektor sound, something that longtime fans of the Bronsert-Szary pairing might see as a downside.

At this point the question is a fair one: are these two sound manipulators really a pair of absolute geniuses? Some will accuse them of selling out, of leaning too heavily on cheap shortcuts, or of distorting their own sound to win over the public. “Monkeywrench” nonetheless remains a fine blend that, without pretending to sketch out or propose future scenarios, worthily sums up the state of the art of a certain strand of electronic music, while always maintaining an appropriate underlying coherence. Not many artists in the contemporary electro scene can afford to make a record like this one while keeping their credibility fully intact.

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29/11/2011