Klack
Modern Production
self-released
Klack is a lot of things at this point: a festival house band, an extended exercise in satirical branding, a clearing house for industrial culture wink-wink, nudge nudge. Thankfully, they’re also still an incredibly dialed in band as well, continuing to deliver on the new beat/EBM hybrid they first offered up nearly seven years ago, managing to keep the sense of fun and immediacy which has always been their calling card while also keeping that charm present in some more sober material.
Functioning as their fifth or sixth EP, depending on how you squint at that format, or possibly their first LP depending on how you define that one, Modern Production starts with exactly the sort of high concept feint we’ve come to expect from Matt Fanale and Erich Oehler, a spot-on send up of the sort of sponsored corporate films which were grist for the mill of Mystery Science 3000 (itself a massive influence on Oehler in particular). It’s the sort of move you might get the sense Fanale and Oehler specifically created the project to indulge in, but the get-the-party-started “Beat Unity”, already a staple in live sets, is a quick reminder of how much substance there is in the programming and structure of their most direct stuff.
More “serious” songs have always been a part of the Klack pitch, but Modern Production finds them flipping between modes even more handily. The linking of some moody, Moev-esque synthpop with later A Different Drum approaches to the form (another forte of Oehler’s often detectable in Null Device) on “Dot Dot Dot” is another in a long line of subtle and substantive pieces which Klack has steadily released, which somehow sits harmoniously alongside more high-concept fare like “Let’s Go To Berlin!”, a mash-up of Microchip League’s “New York” and Fanale’s Industrial Gossipz patter.
There’s a difference between a “fun” band and a “joke” band. There’s nothing inherently wrong with the latter, but they’re often short lived, niche entities. While bracketed by the more exaggerated zaniness which we’d never want Klack to give up on, Modern Design works because Klack know that having fun on the dancefloor necessitates some serious work. Hell, as an especially confident pitchman says on the aforementioned introduction, “Klack products represent the best in quality, freshness, and value!”
