The Singles Jukebox

Yeah it does remind us of something.

[Video][Website]
[5.18]

Will Adams: The collaboration of Modeselektor and Apparat continues to bring together the strength of each — the former’s twisted breakbeats, the latter’s ethereal atmosphere — to create music that is breathtaking and desolate. Like Moderat’s previous lead single, “Reminder” is a treatise on human evil that, rather than lamenting everyone else, indicts itself in the chaos. Mileage may vary on the obscure verses and your taste for Sascha Ring’s warbly, Yorke-ian tenor (I love it), but the chorus demonstrates Moderat’s strength in soaring choruses built on simple ideas — here, the repetition of “burning bridges light my way.”
[8]

Cassy Gress: I don’t really like the Thom Yorke mumbliness (I do in other contexts, just not this one), but I love that “BAP. BAP. BAP. BAP. BAP. beep” that rises out of the clicking percussion at the ends of phrases.  I was hoping that pattern’d eventually transition into something loud and expansive, and it did, and there’s something searing about the diphthong in the word “way”, in “burning bridges light my way”.
[7]

Juana Giaimo: I hear Radiohead everywhere: in the minimalistic electronics, in that nervous beat and of course, in the depressive slow vocals.  
[5]

Jonathan Bogart: As intimately familiar as I was with the grooves of Kid A and Amnesiac in the early 2000s, I don’t think I’ve ever listened to much music that reminded me of it since. That might be a good thing — one of the tragedies of post-punk and indie is that every new sonic innovation birthed its own insular soundalike scene, with (except in rare cases) nothing to say to the wider pop world — but it’s been long enough that this sounds nostalgic now, instead of dully imitative.
[7]

Brad Shoup: The percussion is good, and maybe alive: it keeps poking at Sascha Ring’s rooftop profundities, tapping its watch when it’s time for the chorus. What seems like impatience ends up as restraint: a slow synthsweep over deep water, vocal garbling instead of Ring getting to sing from the heels.
[5]

Megan Harrington: A hymn to the glory of a terminally static life defined by moderation and tasteful restraint. No one would ever dance to this and the lyrics are a touch gauche.
[2]

Ramzi Awn: A great beat compensates for the emo vocals, and the pitched-down chorus is an added and unexpected bonus. 
[6]

Katherine St Asaph: Unremarkable indievoice verses, the sort where the vocalist sounds like he’s taste-testing sour coffee, hitched to a percussion twitch and a heartbreaking, wistful chorus. The latter two are actually good enough to put the first in context; I just don’t know if I’d have gotten that far if I weren’t reviewing.
[5]

Thomas Inskeep: Click, click, yawn: it’s like IDM for the Swedish House Mafia fans.
[2]

Edward Okulicz: While I find this somewhat engaging, I can’t shake the fact that if they’d gone and called themselves Appselektor, it would have been so apposite.
[6]

Patrick St. Michel: Better than any of Thom Yorke’s songs made in a fever of Hyperdub infatuation, but this still feels like a chore.
[4]