Modeselektor reviewed
Modeselektor
Happy Birthday!
(Bpitch Control)
Right up there in Most Relative Things Ever are musical-label applications. One man’s screamo is another’s metalcore; John Q’s post punk is his neighbor’s math rock. It gets even more complicated with electronic music, and few albums underscore it like Happy Birthday!
There’s a term, an archaic one, and though it now alludes to a lifestyle or particular manner of dress it also applies to almost everything on this Modeselektor full-length: industrial. These days we might call “2000007” grime, mostly because the track sputters along with a rogue muffler while TTC spits incongruent prose. If James Murphy (LCD Soundsystem) put his name on “Black Block” they’d call it dance rock, kids would clambor, and the Aphex Twin-like Birthday! cover art would be sent to the Pitchfork Smithsonian. Even the accompanying press literature includes newly minted foreign realms “Eurocrunk,” “Continental Grime,” and “Tech-Rap.” But when the missle battery is unleashed on “The First Rebirth” I take cover. Then I stand up again and bow . . . . to the immortal Industrial.
— Steve Forstneger
Click here to download “Edgar.”
