Mould, Bob ‎– Modulate – New CD

Modulate appeared in 2002 after a long period of musical inactivity from Mould. Following 1998's The Last Dog and Pony Show, he retreated from music, spending several years writing wrestling scripts while working on his next move -- a move he telegraphed with the promotion of Last Dog and the album itself, which announced itself as the last of its kind. And it was. Although the songs on Modulate are clearly the creation of the man who penned classic tunes for Hüsker Dü and Sugar, they're deliberately dressed differently -- they're insular, one-man creations (even more so than Workbook), as that man tries to expand his art by grappling with new technologies and trends and a whole bunch of electronic instruments and computers. At times -- and these are front-loaded toward the beginning of the album -- he's more interested in what these new tools can do than using them to complete his songs, which illustrates just how determined he is to find a new way to make music. The defining characteristic of this album is not the songs, but the approach to the songs -- the way he layers on sequencers and vocoders as if each subsequent overdub brought him further into new sonic territory, even when his writing hasn't changed that much.