DJ KOZE レコード& CD

Review: Whenever we get wind of a new DJ Koze 12", we're hooked. Few artists are as left of centre and loveable as Stefan Kozalla, the Pampa Music boss who has recently worked with Roisin Murphy on her essential new album. Here he is in solo mode on 'Wespennest' though Sophia Kennedy features on what is a dreamy and deep house cut awash with fizzing synths that radiant the same heat as a summer sun. 'Candidasa' is a more intense and dense sound with myriad different melodies all interweaving tightly. Two interesting cuts, as you would expect.

Review: The wonderfully curious Pampa Records boss DJ Koze never makes anything less than idiosyncratic sounds. His 2018 long player Knock Knock proved that point and now it gets pulled apart and remixed by a bunch of fine contemporary house talents. 'Drone Me Up, Flashy' is up first and is tackled by &Me, who layers in phased bass and steps synth sequences to make for a nice trance-inducing trip. Mano Le Tough's Fuzzy Munster remix of 'Muddy Funster' is a frayed-edge tune with innocent melodies that sooth the brain. He also adds his own spin to 'Illumination' and makes it into a sunny, melodic house cut with a breezy disposition.

Review: Pampa has called in the big guns for on this second installment of the DJ Koze Amygdala Remixes series, with Roman Flugel and Robag Wruhme providing two typically intoxicating revisions. Flugel steps up first, delivering a dreamy, lucid and melodic take on "Amygdala" built around restless cymbals and liquid house rhythms. While hardly tropical, the melodies and chords certainly doff a cap to classic 1980s new age recordings. Wruhme reworks "Nices Wolkchen", delivering a typically loose, atmospheric and engaging tech-house interpretation that seems to float from the speakers. It makes an already beautiful track almost implausibly wide-eyed.

Review: Amygdala, the forthcoming LP from DJ Koze holds the dual title of being one of this year's most keenly awaited long players as well as the album with the most bizarre cover art. Quite why the producer is riding a reindeer hasn't been made clear yet, but this two track 12" does clue us in to to the possibility the album will hold up to such high expectations. "La Duquesa" is one of the few tracks on Amygdala not to feature a collaborator and stripped bare of any outside distractions finds Koze on sublime form; equal parts tender, refined, casual, serious, deep and euphoric. When those strings hit is a joy to behold. In contrast "Burn With Me" is dark, druggy, delicious and decadent.

Review: Though his career has taken many turns over the last decade, DJ Koze has remained that most illusive of creatures: a minimal-minded producer with an ear for a melody. This fourth full-length, packed to the rafters with big-name collaborations (Apparat, Caribou, Ada and Matthew Dear all feature), continues his move towards the home-listening sphere. So, while many of the heady rhythms and shuffling grooves hark back to his stripped-back past, Amygdala impresses with its woozy songs, genre-straddling fusions (see the modern soul meets deep house of "Homesick" or the steppy, tropical vibes of "Marilyn Whirlwind") and homely atmosphere.

Review: Pampa offshoot Hart & Tief launched earlier in the year, via a split 12" featuring tracks by Soulphiction and Mike Denhert. This time round, fellow German producers DJ Koze and Robag Wruhme are at the controls. Koze kicks things off with "Driven", a clanking, booty-shaking fusion of metallic percussion hits, resonating electronics, dub techno motifs, and minimalist textures. It feels a little like a contemporary Berlin take on early '90s Sheffield "clonk" (think Sweet Exorcist's Clonk's Coming album on Warp), which is no bad thing in our book. Wruhme's "X-mop 198" is a much more straightforward, early morning techno bubbler, albeit with similarly clanking percussion hits amongst the thumping kick drums and restless, one-note riffs.