Motor - Man Made Machine

Motor have been know for quite some times as the underground darlings of Depeche Mode who went quite far promoting Motor by playing their albums before Depeche Mode concerts. And rightly so, because Motor's techno with mild EBM influences is quite good. Unfortunately the new album fails to deliver on expectations.

Much has to do with the collaborations. On earlier albums Motor would have one or two songs with a guest singer, but on this one its almost half the album. And though the contributors sound promising (Martin L Gore, Douglas McCarthy, Gary Numan) the results are not really exciting. "Pleasure in Heaven" with Gary Numan has his voice soundprocessed in such a way it could easy be a computergenerated voice. You would have to tell people Numan sings this.

"The Knife" with Douglas McCarthy sounds like a Nitzer Ebb take out. Personally i love Nitzer Ebb, but everytime McCarthy ventures out with someone else it sounds very uninspired to me. Dude needs to keep it to Nitzer Ebb imho.

Although the production is crisp, and the album in itself is a pleasing one to listen to, it all sounds uninspired and mostly made on the automatic pilot to me. I surely miss out on the crazy rave tracks on their older work.

The new Motor only has one track i really like and thats the closing track "Between the night" which is a great trip into a mixture of techno, electro and italo not far from Vitalic's best works. There was a lot on this on previous Motor albums, and i think they should concentrate on the techno in their influences and leave the collaborations to a minimum. Motor is a good enough act to be able to hold up their own pants without hotshot people from 80's top acts. Oct 28 2012