Motor - Summer Mix - Aug 2008

Biography of Motor

As Bryan Black replaces the microphone back into its stand, bracing himself for yet another aural bomblast, he adjusts his shades, wryly looking over to MOTOR cohorts Mr. No and Hugo Menendez before launching into new track 'Flashback'. As all three of the band lose complete control on stage, London's Fabric join them in unceremoniously tearing the room apart. Red, white and black images darken the stage as green laser light pierces, cajoles and erupts across the euphoric clubbers faces. The acid flanged madness of 'Sweatbox', dive-bombing attack of 'Stuka Stunt', America goading 'King of USA' and industrial techno bass of 'Black Powder' throw the crowd into a strobe-lit frenzy and the band just about steady the ship with frantic movements amidst the chaos, sweat and energy of their own synths, drums and machines. After endless touring throughout the year, MOTOR have honed their sonic destruction to slick, speaker blowing perfection. Following the customary rounds of sweaty handshakes and shouts of one more the next DJ, Dave Clarke, cues up his first record, awaiting the pandemonium to subside. Checking emails? I don't think so.

'People have this tame image of live electronic music and we go out there and smash things up and spit in your face,' states Bryan Black. For the man who used to programme Prince's keyboards as an in house technician at Paisley Park Studios in the 90s knowingly confirms, 'we make more noise than a guitar can make and that's what we enjoy doing.' Whilst electronic live acts have merged further into the anonymity of the DJ booth over recent years, MOTOR guzzle petrol, bellow toxic fumes and roar from the stage as all three band members wrestle with vocal duties and (alter) egos over their instruments. Forging live gig energy into the sonic envelope of a club environment has enabled MOTOR to play live 'gig' tours with Nitzer Ebb across America and Europe as well as landmark club venues such as Frankfurt's Cocoon and Paris's Rex and festivals throughout Europe like Pukkelpop and Lowlands.

Last year's Nitzer Ebb tour turned out to be a great experience for the band with every gig almost a fight to win the audience over. After an admittedly edgy start MOTOR began to relish their time on stage and have subsequently developed further into their stage personas. 'What has happened is we are less scared and now when we play clubs we don't give a f*ck at all,' interjects the London based Mr. No (aka Parisien drummer/producer Olivier Grasset). 'For the first few gigs in America people were just looking at us like, what are you doing? At first you are put off by it but then you come back stronger and you give it back to them, playing harder and with a bit more attitude and we started doing things that we didn't know we could pull off as performers.'

If MOTOR have gone some way to setting themselves apart from other electronic live acts, then their sophomore album Unhuman has developed their sound away from the continued metallic pummel of 2006's debut Klunk. Whilst obvious club pleasing tracks such as tense acid workout 'Flashback' have already become live show favourites, demolition road tested throughout America, Japan and Europe, the album displays a warmer and more developed sound. 'It's got more soul', says Bryan. 'It has more depth and is more mature. Musically we were always avant-garde. The first one was an experiment. Here we've pushed ourselves with a range of vocals and melodies which maybe we wouldn't have done with the first album.'

Unhuman (its not a word) carries on from the age old themes explored by Fritz Lang's Metropolis, Isaac Azimov's Laws of Robotics and Kraftwerk's cybernetic interface. 'We always felt that this had a more human element to it but at the same time there's not. We're still fighting with the man-machine concept. The machine is struggling to be human but clearly it can't be.' Whilst debut album Klunk proved to be a clubland body blow, with wave after wave of industrial sturm and acid drang, Unhuman delves further into the structure of melody and vocals. Tracks such as '20 Volts of Steel' morph vocodered vocals into jacking Chicago house whilst 'Night Drive' tags hypnotic synth lines onto the chromed body work of a sleek, midnight destined electro-chariot. Title track 'Unhuman' and 'Drug Punk' utilise a vocoder in a way as to ghost the melody onto the dancefloor, coaxing warmth and soul from the production duo's instruments whilst opening track and first single 'Bleep#1' bridges the gap between the dancefloor ready-to-go first album and more developed song structure of Unhuman . 'It might piss off the purists who just want to hear techno tracks but this is the album that we wanted to make,' adds Bryan. 'We've come up with more vocal hooks on this album because when playing live its always more fun to scream into the microphone. We were quite keen to do something above and beyond and open up a new page. We wanted to set ourselves apart again.'

Now, not even a full year from their debut album, the engine has been tweaked and polished for a smoother, more refined ride. 'We were first labelled as a techno band but I think we've gone beyond that,' concludes Bryan Black. 'We've crossed over that barrier and into our own.'