Through­out the past decade, Mod­e­se­lek­tor have been one of the most unique voices in elec­tronic music. From the early IDMslashHip-hop In Lov­ing Mem­ory 12″ to their roller­coaster mix­tape for Boomkat and the genre hop­ping debut album Hello Mom!, the duo of Ger­not Bron­sert and Sebas­t­ian Szary have been show­ing that they are mas­ters of all forms of elec­tronic music these days. One of their early 12“s was released under the name Mod­erat, being a col­lab­o­ra­tion with Appa­rat (Sascha Ring). Com­bin­ing Modeselektor’s dis­torted sen­si­bil­i­ties with the melodic and hyp­notic Appa­rat sound was a bril­liant slice of col­lab heaven. Seem­ingly it was not a happy expe­ri­ence, as they aban­doned fur­ther col­lab­o­ra­tions with each other until Modeselektor’s sec­ond album, Happy Birth­day!, brought the astound­ing team-up with Paul St. Hilaire, “Let Your Love Grow,” cred­ited as a Mod­erat pro­duc­tion. Hap­pily this gave way to the full-length Mod­erat album, released on BPitch Con­trol. The ran­dom cover illus­tra­tion of a woman punch­ing her­self in the face pro­duces loud laughs from any­one I show it to, but doesn’t at all reflect the music inside, show­ing the ever preva­lent humor of this out­fit. Like Hello Mom! and Happy Birth­day, Mod­erat also has a Paul St. Hilaire col­lab­o­ra­tion, but I con­fess it’s a low point for me on this album, hav­ing thought their pre­vi­ous col­lab­o­ra­tions were tran­scen­dent. St. Hilaire uses a gut­tural and relent­less vocal style on this song, and the music back­ing it lacks the spa­cious and lively qual­i­ties of pre­vi­ous out­ings. How­ever, I can hap­pily say that the rest of the album reaches gor­geous elec­tronic heights. The sin­gle, “A New Error,” starts the album off with a spi­ral­ing melody that soon morphs into a stormer of a track. Going fur­ther in, the short track “3 Min­utes Of” starts with a purely ambi­ent and slow burn­ing land­scape. When it changes into a squelchy beat dri­ven inter­po­la­tion that ambi­ence, you are bewil­dered, but ready for what­ever comes next. Mod­erat accom­plishes one of the rare feats of an elec­tronic album: mak­ing the last half of the album more com­pelling than the begin­ning. Elec­tronic albums tend to front­load all the excit­ing stuff. How­ever, “Porc #1″ and “Porc #2″ are epic in their scope, bring­ing in ele­ments of dub­step and house. “Les Grandes March” stands out as a state­ment from the col­lab­o­ra­tion, coa­lesc­ing the dis­parate gen­res into a lovely and haunt­ing dance of dig­i­tal and ana­log trans­mis­sions. Mod­erat takes us out on a bed of sub­tle boo­gie, the Sascha Ring sung “Out of Sight,” a song that shuf­fles and hums it’s way into the ether so well, you couldn’t ask for a more fit­ting finale. I’m quite excited to be fol­low­ing these artists as they con­tinue to grow.

"A New Error" (mp3 — from Xlr8r.com)

Mod­erat — Video Trailer