CD Feature/ Modan Garu: "Foxhunting for the Future"

Contradictions are not necessarily a problem in pop music. Quite often, they even serve as a fertile ground for furious 3-minute strories. Take Modan Garu, for example. In 2006, Tore Rosenberg buys himself the vintage analog synth Roland SH-1, starting to compose sounds, write songs and build a trio around his as yet nameless formation. Two years later, the first single produced on this anything but antiquated equipment is released. Its name: “Foxhunting for the Future”.

Obviously then, this song is not a hymn to blindly following trends or running forwards without looking back. While the lyrics retain a particular brand of vagueness, which allow for all kinds of personal interpretations, there are a couple of themes running through it, like laserbeams cutting through a forrest of allusions. Becoming immortal thanks to one’s art seems to be one of them: “I want to read Tolstoij”, Elisabeth Roise sings, “You want to burry your ipod in a spaceship and survice another century”.

On other occasions, she wants to look like “Lady Di in her primetime” and is asking for the “biscuits of my dreams”. Maybe then, “Foxhunting about the future” is about finding one’s way amidst a world which plays with cliches from the past, while claiming that there is no other direction but forwards.

Or maybe it is just about having a good time on the dancefloor and forgetting about all worries for as long as the drums keep beating. Modan Garu’s sound is quirky and full of beans, yet romantic and completely unironic, leaning on a dominant bass line and bucketloads of squealing and squeaking synth adorations. In the chorus, the songs slows to a breakdown, then picks up pace and locks the listener back into its cyclical verse again.

The “Rosenberg Remix”, meanwhile, opens with a powerful electro groove and a vocoder reciting the first lines of the lyrics, before the track enters a sort of futuristic house zone, filled with glistening stabs and weightless pads, lifting the chorus to an emphathic acme, all adrenalin and swooning beauty.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is it, these two tracks making up the entire music of the 7’’ Vinyl, strictly limited to 500 copies. Since first releasing it in September of last year, the band have released a second single (“Schiller’s Children”) and are now offering their debut album, poised to gain them an audience beyond their native Norway. Contradictions aside, their love for the past has certainly carved out a future for Modan Garu.

By Tobias Fischer

Homepage: Modan Garu