moderat (modeselektor + apparat)

Moderat (Deluxe Edition)

*Deluxe Edition - Includes 2 Bonus Tracks, a Shackleton Remix, and a bonus DVD with 10 killer video films!* A project that began life in 2002, Moderat was born when Apparat's Sascha RIng hooked up with Modeselektor's Gernot Bronsert and Sebastian Szary for an EP on Bpitch. So strenuous was the recording and production of this EP the trio felt moved to title it Auf Kosten Der Gesundheit (meaning "At The Cost Of Health") and soon went separate ways after its release. Immediately afterwards Modeselektor went on to release their debut long-player Hello Mom! while Apparat turned his attention to the widely acclaimed Orchestra Of Bubbles album, made in collusion with Bpitch boss Ellen Allien. Thankfully, this did not herald the end for Moderat, and some six years after their first work together the trio set about making a Moderat full-length. The end product must surely represent some of the most ambitious and far-reaching recordings these musicians have ever been involved in, occasionally to the point where you feel a few editorial decisions could have been made to make the album flow more seamlessly; the discrepancy between Ring-driven epic electronica like 'Rusty Nails' and the more typically Modeselektor-esque tracks like the dancehall-influenced 'Slow Match' (featuring Paul St. Hilaire, as tends to be the case in these situations) is a fairly vast one, leading you to believe that you're actually getting rather more than a single album's worth of material here. As you'd expect from Moderat's line-up, the production on the album is incredibly dense and has clearly been laboured over. It's an exemplary collision of digital and analogue technologies: while the recording is very much valve-powered (pumped through a vintage EMI console at the same studio in which Bowie recorded 'Heroes') the project was supplied bespoke digital processing algorithms by software designer and producer Joshua Kit Clayton. Consequently, tracks like 'Out Of Sight' and 'Porc 2' have a scale, depth and, for want of a better word, uniqueness that's all too difficult to achieve in electronic music. This Deluxe Version features two remix bonus tracks: one from Busdriver and a terrific, elongated overhaul of 'Rusty Nails' by Shackleton.