A late-period Force Tracks artist aids in resuscitating this once feared lost patient, though like many stroke or heart attack survivors, life after near death is never quite the same.The financial collapse of European music distributor EFA in 2004 sounded the death knell for countless independent labels. Of these perhaps the most unfortunate casualty was Achim Szepanski's electronic powerhouse Force Inc. Music Works, which housed a handful of potent sublabels including the pioneering tech-house imprint Force Tracks. Recently, Szepanski quietly relaunched a handful of these under new names. After a few tasty twelve inches through Disco Inc., the Force Tracks brand was fully revived just in time for Unai's debut artist album.
So is A Love Moderne the resplendent triumph fans have been waiting for? One would expect so, given the potential displayed on the A-side to his 2003 EP and 2005's promising pre-release singles for "I Like Your Style" and "Oh You And I." Yet the silky subtlety of Unai's microhouse pop template which worked so well on that particular hooky cut falls blunderingly flat when transferred to a full length album. Everything here plays out as listenable and, on occasion, memorable, but honestly that alone doesn't cut it for a label that made its mark pumping out instant classics. Erik Møller's voice, to which critical comparisons to Neil Tennant I find misguided and entirely off base, proves all air and no substance, offering purely decorative texture to skeletal compositions like "Blissful Burden" and "Moderne Love." Where some emo lovers could endear themselves to the sentiments literally echoed on the sparse "Heart Is To The Left," a keener listener will instead see a weak, straining performance masked by deft studio trickery. Sadly, this flaw pervasively saturates the entire CD's duration.
Pleasant enough, A Love Moderne doesn't come remotely close to achieving the brilliance of previous Force Tracks full-lengths such as Dub Taylor's Detect, Luomo's Vocalcity, or MRI's Rhythmogenesis. Instead, this mild album sits lukewarm on the shelf as an example of the excesses of minimalism, a concept less oxymoronic that one might suspect.
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