The late-career eponymous album isn’t a rare phenomenon, often coming between an artist’s third and seventh album.  Yet it has taken veteran Detroit techno producer Moodymann 11 albums and 17 years to get to his self-titled.  Such albums often serve as establishments of identity in the face of changing musical and cultural currents. It’s tempting to view “Moodymann” as a reaction against the recent EDM boom. But for all his stature in Detroit’s rich and influential techno tradition, Moodymann has never been very interested in the dance world around him.
“Moodymann” is a nostalgic album, but it’s not for bygone eras of dance music so much as for the African-American musical traditions around which Moodymann likely grew up.  This has always been a theme in Moodymann’s work, most prevalent in his haunting, abstract blaxploitation tribute “Black Mahogani.”  But it’s never been more obvious than on “Moodymann.”  Over the course of the sprawling 27-track record, he makes a club banger out of a highly recognizable Muddy Waters sample, covers Seventies legends Funkadelic, and crafts a song whose resemblance to Stevie Wonder’s “Higher Ground” is deliberate and obvious.
That’s not even touching on the samples. Moodymann treats ’70s sounds in much the same way recent indie music treats ’80s sounds, burying them in hazy effects to create a ghostly and dreamlike illusion. Voices, both singing and speaking, drift in and out and never really sound present.  These sonics are intriguing and menacing, but they convey a deep sense of melancholy.
The tracks are interpolated with audio snippets from various speakers discussing Detroit’s history. As the album goes on, these samples become darker and more concerned with Detroit’s decline and association with murder and drug abuse.  The album’s most poignant moment comes on the climactic “Sloppy Cosmic,” on which a voice offers alarming statistics on Detroit’s murder rate as a disembodied sample from Funkadelic’s “Cosmic Slop” coos a repeated mantra.
All this might make “Moodymann” sound like a bummer.  This is true at times, but when relegated to the background, “Moodymann” is top-tier party music.  The beats are strong, consistent and for the most part very danceable.  The album’s formidable length also gives Moodymann ample room to fuck around a bit, evident in the goofy interludes and the inexplicable inclusion of a very good remix of Lana Del Rey’s “Born To Die.”
Moodymann himself is a constant presence, and his voice contributes to a levity that balances out the moments of darkness. He sings a lot of his own hooks in between musing rakishly about women and how people hate him because he’s a “Detroiter.”  His presence almost seems to break the fourth wall in comparison to his largely distant role on his previous work, which mostly let the samples talk and worked more through abstract evocation of past music traditions than direct reference.
“Moodymann” is an album that reflects its creator’s identity as a Detroiter and an African-American musician as well as mirroring his concerns about the state of his hometown.  It took this long for Moodymann to establish his identity so powerfully, and as such, “Moodymann” is a rare gift.  This is one of the most poignant and personal dance albums I’ve heard in a while, as well as one of the funnest, funkiest and all-out best.