The Modernist - Total The Modernist (2021)

Hardly any generation of musicians has mastered the confusion between real person, artist and the various identities and alter egos attached to them as perfectly as that of Jörg Burger aka The Modernist aka The Bionaut aka Burger Industries aka you name it. A particularly fine example of this complexity is the track "Modernism Begins At Home", which Jörg Burger released on TOTAL 9 in 2008. Not as The Modernist, but under his, as they say so nicely old-fashioned, civil name, with which he has also been responsible for decades for almost every record that leaves the house KOMPAKT, as Head of Mastering. This Jörg Burger, through and through a follower of the pop traditions of the eighties, dedicates here in the guise of the mischievous puppet master his own little hymn to his favorite puppet. Washed with all (self-)ironic waters, he leads the cool, elegant and always perfect Modernist on silken threads through another charade, in which he lyrically quotes one of the biggest Tekkkno hits of the 90s: "I'm bigger, I'm bolder, I'm rougher and tougher in other words sucker. There ain't no other. I'm the one and only Dominator, I'm the one and only Dominator".

Indeed, there ain't no other than this The Modernist, to whom Jörg Burger sets here also musically a monument. Like no other KOMPAKT artist he is able to program such warm bass lines floating on velvet cushions, to garnish them with light guitar chords, to put the so typical keyboard dabs on top of it, to finally reach for the microphone himself and to always reach as deeply as stylistically confidently into the treasure chest of pop. Like in "Pearly Spencer" from TOTAL 7, where The Modernist takes on the pop hit "The Days Of Pearly Spencer", written and recorded by David McWilliams at the end of the sixties, but quotes only one line of the rather sad and hopeless lyrics: "The race is almost run".

The complete works of The Modernist (and Jörg Burger) are full of such quotations, humorous allusions and references as enigmatic as they are sometimes obvious. "The Price Of Love", "Channel 28" or "Super Recognizer" - Jörg Burger loves to play with words, their meaning or their loss of meaning, the dissolution in something new - similar to and yet completely different from his longtime companion, friend and collaborator Wolfgang Voigt. Whoever listens to the album "Opportunity Knox" (Harvest, 1997) again - unfortunately not released by KOMPAKT - will know afterwards what we are talking about here.

As a masterful border crosser between techno, house, pop and "Lush Life Electronica", Jörg Burger deserves a very special place of honor among the greats of electronic music history. The digital compilation "Total The Modernist", on which for the first time a "Best of" of the tracks released on KOMPAKT's legendary TOTAL series are collected under this alias, can only represent a part of his comprehensive and versatile work, but this does not make this Burger work show any less impressive and enjoyable.

The musical journey begins with "Indigo" and "Channel 28", two very early Modernist classics from TOTAL 2 and 5, which have that typical groove that Jörg Burger should have patented at some point. Like clockwork these tracks run and yet always grant enough soul and warmth not to be crushed by their technical perfection. "Remodernist" by TOTAL 12, another pun of the upscale category, foreshadows how much Jörg Burger also knows about acid house, but he's probably the only one to have an acoustic guitar strum over the whole thing at some point. "The International Loner" quotes the legendary Scottish 80s pop/post-punk band The Associates; if you look at pictures of their frontman Billy Mackenzie, you could well confuse them with one or the other press photo of The Modernist. After the already mentioned, always great "Pearly Spencer" at position 7 there is with "The Price of Love" featuring Joe Goddard once again a highlight, in which the Modernist pulls out all the stops of his skills. Bluesy, country-esque electronic pop music, elegant, stylish and beyond any doubt.

"That's why the song remains the same, only the singer’s gone insane".