Don’t Call It Monkey Business

This Deutsch DJ duo celebrates their double decade anniversary with a fresh album called Monkeytown. Much more than the high quality indefinable music production you have come to expect from Modeselektor, this album also features some of the best and brightest artists of today, including Busdriver, Thom Yorke, and Anti Pop Consortium, among others.

“Blue Clouds” starts off the album in an up-tempo analog and drum machine rhythm accompanied by an organ lead, which takes this track on a bouncy tour of notes high and low. “Pretentious Friends” follows, with Busdriver emceeing the track from front to back. Thom Yorke sings on “Shipwreck,” demonstrating what it would sound like if Radiohead produced a drum and bass song.  A glitch electro R&B jam, “Berlin” has Miss Platinum singing nostalgic lyrics about Modeselektor’s hometown “Got nowhere to go/I’m running home.”  A little more ambient with world influences is “Green Light Go,” which includes PVT doing hypnotic vocals. Similarly, “Humanzied” with Anti Pop Consortium features an assortment of world percussions, including a didgeridoo.

In many ways, Monkeytown is typical of the Modeselektor sound in that it bounces around from one genre to another, determined to remain nicheless, and it is only made better by the brilliant guest vocals. The amount of subgenres and inspirations this album draws from are absurdly too numerous to list here; just listen to it. Fans will absolutely dig it, DJs will play it, and newcomers should prepared to have their interest peaked by Monkeytown.