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UNHUMAN, Motor’s follow-up to its debut disc KLUNK, continues its mission of stretching the boundaries of dance music and multimedia performance. While djs as personalities is not a new concept at this point in time, Motor takes the idea a step further, combining the cult of personality of, say, D.J. The Evil Green Lantern with the showmanship of Trent Reznor. It’s an interesting concept which probably works better on the stage than it does on disc, though the disc is not bad, not bad at all.

Motor is a duo, consisting of Mr. No and Bryan Black, occasionally augmented by additional personnel in their live performances. The title track and “Drug Punk,” particularly, are evocative of the industrial metal of such groundbreaking pioneers as Nitzer Ebb (with whom Motor toured in 2006). The standout track is perhaps “Flashback,” which makes use of a repetitive sample (oh yeah, what a surprise!) interspersed with a Nine Inch Nails-influenced riff that hits with surprise even after numerous times on the player. The inaugural single off of UNHUMAN, “Bleep #1,” is best experienced with the accompanying video which can be seen either on YouTube or on Motor’s myspace page (which, if you’re under the age of 30, you don’t need me to tell you about) along with Motor’s other music videos, all of which are uniformly excellent. The whole, in fact, may well be better than the sum of the parts. UNHUMAN continues the exploration of the speculative topics which began in KLUNK, with, perhaps, a more accessible edge, this time dealing with robotics. Asimov and von Harbeau are the major literary influences here, so if your more bookish friends find themselves roped into UNHUMAN, you’ll understand.

UNHUMAN might have been improved with the inclusion of a video track or two with the disc, but if Motors intent is to cross pollinate media, making their fan base seek them out in different places, one can hardly quibble. This is an interesting project by a duo that gets more intriguing with each release.