Who Else

Editors’ Notes The title of Modeselektor’s fourth album—their first in eight years, incredibly—is an implicit challenge. And they’re absolutely right: Who else but this Berlin duo could manage such an effortless fusion of UK-inspired bass music and classic German techno? In between albums, Modeselektor turned their labels Monkeytown, 50 Weapons, and Seilscheibenpfeiler into hubs for all manner of broken beats and low-end pressure, qualities they balance here with the piano stabs and rave sirens of a cut like “WMF Love Song,” a tribute to a foundational ’90s Berlin club. For proof of their border-hopping bona fides, they get London rapper Flohio to spit on “Wealth,” a thrilling fusion of post-dubstep and road rap. As a throwback to their raving days in former East German bank vaults, they lay down the martial acid sequences of the barnstorming “I Am Your God.” And for those who know them mainly for the heart-on-sleeve emo of Moderat, their trio project with Apparat, they get unabashedly misty-eyed on the closing “Wake Me Up When It’s Over”—at least until bare-knuckled jungle breaks come tearing through the frame, shredding the tasteful synths and channeling the kind of joyous mayhem that few other acts could muster, much less control.