[rating=7.00]
Moderat is releasing their third album titled appropriately III. Happily, that is the only part of the album not worthy of comment. As with their previous albums, III is a brilliant mix of dark beats, heavy basslines, haunting vocals, and the general grit that can only be found in the merging of German acts Modeselektor and Apparat. Indeed, the whole work feels like it successfully carries forward the sonic palette developed with the brilliant II.
The first track on the album, “Eating Hooks,” pursues a melancholy, but nonetheless engaging, path, Sascha Ring’s vocals lightly flowing over a heavy bass line and an atmospheric background that lifts the listener as it builds. Building out of that, “Running” pursues a more uplifting tone, one that could be a sister to II’s “Let in the Light.” Similarly, “Finder” would not sound out of place with II’s “Therapy. “Ghostmother” and “Reminder” play with a break-beat drum line, the now-characteristic Moderat “screeches” (how else to describe them… akin to the screech one might find in dry rubber on a hard metal surface, almost a squeal, these sounds were core to II’s “Bad Kingdom”) and a light chorus.
Moderat slows things down briefly on the heavy, pensive, expressive track, “The Fool,” and on its follow-on, “Intruder.” The two tracks combine to give the listener a brief moment of rest, of down time, before again building to finish “Intruder” and lead into the grimy piece that follows. That song, “Animal Trails,” is a killer instrumental track in the veins of II’s “Ilona.” It begins with a light drone and synth meandering before building out of that with cinematic-quality riffs, then erupting in a heavy rim-shot-filled rhythm line, carried along on a deep undercurrent pulsing with grit and animosity. Just as the listener bites heavily into this grime, the pulsing, powerful main riff of this tune is let go in favor of light riffing… only to be brought back to close on the same dark note that is the high point of the track.
The album ends with “Ethereal,” a melodic piece that at last transforms into a drum line suggesting a modern dance piece in which the performers explore, with increasing agitation, the limits of the walls that surround them, building to a frenetic urgency before falling to their knees to slowly fade away. And that, perhaps, is the best summary of this album: it is a work of urgency, a work that explores sonic limitations while never pushing far from the groundwork laid on previous collaborations. It is, in short, an excellent addition the catalog of any Moderat fan – or that of anyone else.
