Rod Modell is one of the few people still working in Detroit. And who better than a Detroit-based techno dub artist to convey the weird feeling of living in a warped reality.
With Liumin, he’s thrown off some of the Basic Channel copy-catting he’s previously been accused, even as one track is called “BCN Dub”. Actually that track ends up being one of the craziest tracks on the whole almost 80 minute album (for the purposes of this review, I will not critique the field recordings second disc). It has a heavy beat mixed with distorted horns trying in vain to get through the mix. Add to that little chords dancing around the field recordings and you have a mammoth dance track.
All of this has that same addictive quality. Field recordings can be fine by themselves, but whenever they are put into dance songs, it is usually out of humor or pretension. Here, neither one of those reasons holds true. Hearing the environment around the lurching, persistent beats just confirms how living and breathing each track is.
Even the pacing is perfect. You’d think that an 80 minute album would grow boring or contain fat, but you’d be wrong. Like Basic Channel, they use each element (including length) to their advantage. The bookends on the album provide an easing into the harder beats.
Melody appears as well, showing the heart and soul of the humans behind this. “Firefly” has a beautiful, gorgeous melody behind the infectious rhythm. That rhythm only gets harder with the aptly named “Maglev”. Maglev lives up to the train’s name, moving at some near-unreasonable speed.
I listen to a huge amount of dance music, probably an unhealthy amount. But this album really did it for me, for reasons I can’t fully explain. Rod just knew exactly what he was doing, there’s pure dance perfection here.