Natural Selektion

How to make the Difficult Second Album even more difficult: Spend two years recording the first record, an electronic kaleidoscope that becomes an unexpected smash. Fill your days in between playing shows. Then, set a suitably unrealistic deadline to finish the much-anticipated next LP. Along the way, break one of the four hands in the group and finally, get your respective partners pregnant, timed just so you become a dad as you’re about to go on the road again.

That, Hot Press readers, is the last 20-odd months in the life of Berlin-based Modeselektor, one of the most unlikely crossover electronic artists of the past decade.
If motormouth Sebastian Szarsy – one half of the duo, alongside Gernot Bronsert – is still tired today, he isn’t showing it. But he remembers it.
“On the Hello Mom tour, we had over 120 shows, playing for a year-and-a-half, and that was very exhausting. Can you imagine? It was amazing, but exhausting. In 2006, we thought, let’s have a break, but it didn't happen. The first deadline for the album was December, but that was impossible to make. And then we changed it to May, and then said to the booking agent, ‘No more live sets, only DJ gigs’. But then Gernot broke his hand in an accident at home, so we had a little down time. It was like a holiday for us! So we started in March, and had our producing session for three months.”
As befits two men who are about to become fathers, the pair treated their music-making like a nine to five. Or, to be exact, 10 to six.
“We worked every day from 10 in the morning until six in the evening, and not in the studio, in a little producing unit in Gernot’s home. When his girlfriend left in the morning to go to work, I came over! Like, ‘Hello, good morning!...’ It was a hard time.”
Sounds just like a ‘normal’ job.
“Yes, that’s what it was like, with a lunch break and everything.” Sebastian is definitely the spokesman, sometimes answering questions with what feels like a prepared statement. Gernot is mooching around in the background, tinkering away in their new studio.
Happy Birthday – named as a result of their imminent fatherhood – follows a reasonably similar sonic template to Hello Mom: the basic ingredients are still techno, hip-hop, IDM and electro, albeit given Modeselektor’s unique tweak.
New faces on Happy Birthday include Otto Von Schirach, an electro purist handed the task of covering Scooter’s ‘Hyper Hyper’. It’s magnificent. Unusually, Paul Smith from love ‘em or hate ‘em UK indie kids Maxïmo Park also crops up.
“Maxïmo Park are very fresh,” Sebastian enthuses. “We met them in Berlin this year. It was very easy.”
Their ‘who gives a fuck?’ attitude speaks volumes about the difference between the UK and Germany – it’s hard to imagine any of the UK electronic players embracing a similarly carefree attitude (and, if they did, living to tell the tale). Modeselektor simply don’t care what you think – if it feels right, they'll do it. And if they can smile while doing it, all the better.
“A lot of people don’t have fun. They look like statues on stage, and you have to entertain the people with your normal humour. If you don’t have humour, that’s not easy. So if you're a very serious guy, you should not play!”
Their Teutonic take on tongue-in-cheek extended to finishing their Tivoli set with Dune’s spazz-rave hit ‘Can’t Stop Raving’, something that seems to have delighted and appalled in equal measure.
Now the album is finished, will they do things differently with the benefit of hindsight?
“No. This year, we have 15 shows left. But the thing is, we both become daddies before this year is over. Me this month, and Gernot in December, so touring will be very hard. Oh my God, I can’t think about it. We have so much to do!”

Happy Birthday is out now