VCMG – Ssss

March 12, 2012 • Mute Records

I have to admit I was a bit surprised to hear two Depeche Mode veterans making a techno record—it seems a bit out of their way, though I can understand their motives for doing so (sometimes it's fun to make an album in a new style just to see what happens). While their effort is admirable and the music really isn't bad, it's a hard album to like and I have plenty of mixed feelings about it.

Perhaps as to be expected from two musicians who helped pioneer electronic dance music in the 1980s, Ssss sounds somewhat like a throwback to the early, dirty, dredgy early days of techno, with standard four-on-the-floor beats punctuated by plenty of wobbly, swooping, glitchy electronics. The approach is relatively simplistic—and whether that's a good thing or not rests entirely on the listener, and for me it has its pros and cons. This sort of sparse production makes every bass hit, every twinging synth melody, every little glitch and pad a little bit more important and stand out (though perhaps with the side effect of the not-so-good bits standing out as well). Everything has room to breathe, as well; in fact, a lot of the album sounds like its cover: writhing bends of sound and groove with a bit of whitespace to let everything move around a bit. It's very accessible and clean-sounding.

At the same time, though, I can't help but feel a bit worn out and maybe a bit jaded from listening to Ssss. Without the conventional song structures the producers are used to in Depeche Mode and Erasure, this album's tracks seem to stagnate, repeating the same motifs over and over. There's some general variety to had on the album as a whole, but each track is either far too long or never take the opportunity to explore their own sound (good exceptions, though, include "Windup Robot" and "Single Blip"'s excellent evolution). And it doesn't offer a lot in the way of pushing the boundaries of techno, either; granted, I'm nothing of an expert in the genre, but I've heard a few early compilations of the original Detroit scene (the excellent Tresor comps, to be precise), and the only difference between those and this is more reverb. (Okay, okay, maybe that's a little unfair.)

And after all, just about anyone listening to Ssss is in it for the connections to Depeche Mode and probably don't have a lot of techno experience. That's fine; they're going to get their moneys' worth out of this. But for someone who already knows the ins and outs of the genre, there's not a lot of reason to touch this. However, it does have its moments, and for those who are interested it's not a bad listen by any means.

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