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Motor, "Unhuman"
My biggest criticism of this duo's first CD for the considerably waning NovaMute sublabel was its lack of cohesion as an album, an all-too common pitfall that techno artists fall into when signed based on their dancefloor prowess. Upon receiving this in my mailbox, I had hoped that Mr. No and Bryan Black would use their second shot on plastic to accomplish something better, to learn from their influences instead of just impersonating them. I should have known better.
On its face, there is nothing wrong with a CD packed with clubby updates of Nitzer Ebb and Front 242. Still, as the electroclash and technowave once touted by DJ Hell's Gigolo label has been completely co-opted by hygiene-deficient hipsters and simultaneously diminished by the boisterous ascent of the far more exciting French wave, electronic body music rehashes like "Drug Punk," the acid washed "20 Volts of Steel," and the previously released "Bleep #1" just don't carry much weight. DJs who still hold tight to the dark machine beats will dig the ghoulish horror house grooves of "Re-Format" and the Daft Punk-foraging title track. Still, there is nothing new here musically when compared to Klunk, their debut released just last year. Perhaps some time away from the studio will give these guys a chance to reevaluate their position, though I think I have learned my lesson enough to pass on whatever might come next from them. To paraphrase our bumbling president, I wont get fooled again.
What makes Unhuman such a bitter pill to swallow is not even Motor's complacency for mere adequacy and emulation, but that Novamute, once among the vanguard of electronic music’s imprints, would continue to nurture such retrograde entertainment. This is the same label that brought Richie Hawtin to international superstardom with several Plastikman albums and three DE9 mixes that raised standards, rewrote rules, and seduced generations. Admittedly, Novamute has put out its share of throwaways, but it is easy to forgive a few missteps when weighing those decisions against classics from Luke Slater, Soul Center, and Speedy J, to name just a few. The latter of these especially had a profound impact on my appreciation for electronic music with A Shocking Hobby, a challenging monolith of a record that shook the foundations with its post-industrial drill n bass and eviscerated techno. Unhuman, another middling collection of Motor's possible singles in lieu of a proper album sullies the legacy of this formerly great sublabel, now more likely to be absorbed into the EMI failure factory and hopefully euthanized out of its misery.
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