Köhncke heads straight for the dancefloor on this disco-minded two-tracker, and enterprising DJs will let him stay there all night long if they know what’s good for them. The title track is a pleasant-enough eight-minute minimal house thing that never quite gets to where it threatens to go, but should work well in a mix with, oh, just about everything. No, the winner here is the flip, “Overhead,” wherein the mirror ball kicks into overdrive and a tasty Four Seasons (yes, those Four Seasons) sample is twisted and tweaked in a series of peaks and valleys and breaks that will have hands in the air and sweat in your eyes. Shame this didn’t hit in May or June, as it could have ruled the summer parties. Better late than never.

Kompakt / KOM 141
[Listen]
[Todd Hutlock]

“Wherefore art thou Kompakt bangers?” To thread: “Skip Tutorial” bends and breaks over a phantasmic pulse. Heavy reverb and disintegrating beats run throughout along a synthesized Rhodes. On the other side, “Sloensje” brings the listener back closer to the K2’s usual output, if only a little. Gatzigristos privileges melody and sound over movement, an approach perhaps more admirable on headphones. But with the mix trend towards Hawtin and Magda’s liquidating of contemporary techno’s most valuable assets into 30 second clips, someone can easily find that much peak time here.

K2 / K2/13
[Listen]
[Cameron Octigan]

Ronan Fitzgerald: Steadycam releases another massive sounding record on K2, after the excellent “Knock Kneed.” His bizarre style, faintly retro, but not pillaging from the same eras as everyone else, continues to bear dark techno fruit. “Kidney Issues” is probably his most accessible track to date, brutally simple glam-house. The title cut is more similar to the minimal techno of his previous releases, with the trademark dry and heavy sounding Steadycam snare riding over some lush 303 and keyboards that would probably sound more at home on Kompakt proper rather than K2.

Cameron Macdonald: Please don’t mistake the title track for Italo-disco. Consider it the soundtrack to an after-school TV special for when the troubled teen protagonist cannot decide between suicide, dope, calling his ex- and then hanging up, or hiding in a fort built out of couch cushions. On the flip, “Kidney Issues” fits well with Kompakt’s reputation for minimal techno hypnosis, Steadycam autopilots a ceiling fan-chug of a rhythm on his electro-synth and trots on a steady, up-tempo stomp. Its droning, locked-groove could have veered off-road and into a cornfield just to keep the music interesting, but it’s better than hiding beneath a pile of cushions.

K2 / K2/14
[Listen]

Greg Bird of [Kontrol], a San Francisco minimal techno powerhouse, once said to a friend of mine that “techno is the best when you can’t tell if it’s house or techno.” The Platform is exactly that sort of release … techno, sure, but I’ll be damned if there isn’t a serious electrohouse thing going on at the same time. Opening with titular track “The Platform,” John Dahlbäck booms and bleeps his way through a DJ-friendly intro before loose, electrified snares, (dare I say) pleasantly sloppy, and clear tone swells give way to a beautiful series of electro chimes. A minute or so later, he unleashes a delightfully obtrusive bass that gets things really going, breaking down, and going again. “The Chopper,” which may as well be called “The Stomper,” is a speedy space battle in a damaged ship. Dodging most of the asteroids, and unmoved by the explosions in the distance, Hug flies through the galaxy discerningly blasting enemy ships with his techno lasers. “Faceless is More” is the perfect after-hours, backroom track to calm down after the dancefloor smoke has cleared. Hug shows us the Platform and raises the bar.

K2 / K2 12
[Cameron Octigan]

Ronan Fitzgerald: Presumably there are people in the indie kid turned Kompakt kommunity that don’t start thinking “calling Mr Raider, calling Mr Wrong, calling Mr Vain” when they hear “Transparenza.” Shame on them! “Tranzparenza” is essentially a great piece of pop trance just in time for summer. And if you’re going to break a trance taboo, then why not do it with an air raid siren?! On the flip Davidovitch’s “Cellophane” continues the summer in the 90s theme. I’m too young to remember if Ace of Base released “12 inch versions,” or what kind of seedy underworld clubs played these, but if they did then “Cellophane” is surely what they sounded like; stomping dub basslines for the holiday resort beach.

Nick Sylvester: Coulda told me Davidovitch’s b-side was Senor Coconut stabbing at some sideways America’s Most Wanted, Commish or New York Undercover theme, I’da believed. This is by far the most shoulder-jiggly synth-noir wax I’ve heard out the Speicher series, which once used to put out real dance(able) music but now has become a repository for shitty basslines like this one, blup blup blup, fat guy doing the stairmaster. I appreciate the “steady beat with crazy shit on top” approach—crazy shit here being some dentist drill sounds and a dude talking about stuff—but this is camp at best, and it’s too slow to dance to anyway.

Know what? I think Mayer and R. Voigt actually do take a cop theme for their side. Listen to “Transparenza,” then listen to the turnaround on (the original) “Axel F.” The whole thing is a pleasant if not accidental Rex the Dog homage, the synths way too rounded off for either Mayer or Voigt. And like Davidovitch, crazy shit on top is the game’s name, but these vets pronounce their beats better, their snares crumpling not snapping, their smarts in the kicks.

Kompakt Extra / KOMEX36

Three years ago I remember when everybody over at Traum was making tracks like this one’s topside: bleary-eyed long tones, early morning fog, really effete, really erotic, and then some big-dick kick violates it and systematizes it. Even better here. “Like You” gives up on minimal quickly and switches up to a big bright pop progression and a huge vocal hook not unlike “Lovefood” and “De Papel.” I always thought they were the same song and now I know they are, because “Like You” does the same bizarre “techno pop that makes you think!” lyrical nonsense: “I just want to be like you / I don’t care what people say / I just want to be myself / I am was you…” sings Boratto’s chanteuse, before going through some kinda-awesome vocal garble that, I guess, is performative, turning into the other person, etc.. In other words: fantastic. As for the Supermayer remix on the ass, don’t bother, unless you like blueballed beats, bells and whistles, or people who say “literally, bells and whistles.”

Kompakt Pop / KOM POP 10
[Nick Sylvester]

While the cut-up method has left literature snacking with newspaper forks, its most unnerving use in music has been chugged straight from the word blender. Letting Todd Edwards turn the shape of a speech bubble into a tornado and Scott Herren (in his Prefuse 73 guise) make dada into a glitched-hopped phrase, rapid-fire edits only achieve the startling otherness they deserve with speech. But rarely have phonemes sounded as comforting as with The Field’s newest EP, Sun & Ice. With “Over the Ice” Axel Willner (The Field) uses phrases as exfoliates. “Istedgade” sounds like the distant waves of a euro-dance hit before locking into a pleasure-principle loop-hook. The song’s blurry phrase repeats and reveals a slow ebb and flow that never says the same thing twice. And while the strummed guitars bear a resemblance to Superpitcher’s moody epics, Willner sheds the Rhein’s cloudy days for Stockholm’s lucid nights. Although the demo spilled onto the internet a while back, the title track hasn’t aged second—the song is swoon-worthy and provides the perfect backdrop to a packed lunch of cut-ups. Highly Recommended.

Kompakt / KOM137
[Nate De Young]

Superpitcher re-emerges from the shadows with “Enzian”, a pretty, slow burning piece of emo-house which sounds like label-mate DJ Koze crossed with Border Community. For a producer who has created some of the best electronic records of the current era it’s a bit of a disappointment, in that it seems to fall into that weird “listening techno” vortex that has swallowed up all of Kompakt apart from K2 lately. You can’t escape the sense that the dub:techno ratio Kompakt operate on is really out of sync with the rest of dance music at the moment; so many sticky unlovable, unplayable releases. Stardiver’s “Borderline” on the other hand has some kind of kick to it, sounding a little like something off “Silent Shout”; but the truth is both tracks here are more pleasant than essential.

Kompakt Extra / KOMEX35
[Listen]
[Ronan Fitzgerald]

I may very well be the only electronic music fan or DJ in the world that doesn’t think the Kompakt label wakes up every morning, fixes some coffee, and then shits solid gold, but so be it. Not to say this latest release from Michael Mayer’s uber-hip imprint is bad, and certainly not to imply that they haven’t put out their share of straight-up bombs, but I’ve heard this tired shuffle-house groove way too much and I’ll doubtless repeat that experience countless times before I’ve gone the way of trip-hop and Goldie. If I was dancing and either one of these personality-less tracks came on, it’d be a perfect time to go pee or get a beer. If I was sitting in my living room I’d just tap on that handy right arrow key. Oh, look, some disco claps come in near the three-and-a-half minute mark. Yawn. It’s called quality control, folks. Look it up.

Kompakt Extra / 034
[Mallory O’Donnell]

How do you revisit a critically acclaimed album noted for its eclecticism, homemade quality, danceability and humour? If you’re Stefan Kozalla, aka DJ Koze, you enlist the remixing services of talented cohorts Jan Jelinek and Matthew Dear. Up first, laptop crafstman Jelinek steals the show, looping “My Grandmotha” into a gurgling brew of pneumatic stutters, clipped cymbals, and exhaled vocals that chug atop the deep fried fumes of an infectiously dubby bass beat. But while the track’s gorgeous groove is sure to prod hips toward this summer’s dance floors, it thankfully retains the original’s Saturday morning cartoon innocence. Herr Kozalla wraps up side A with loungey bonus track “Bobby,” employing a warm, revolving melody and a rhythmic, granular sway as if he’s panning for gold under the gentle radiance of a midsummer sunset. Gears shift and unfortunately grind on side B’s “Raw,” as Matthew Dear—working under his revved-up Audion moniker—scatters and then reassembles the original’s jigsaw pattern for what proves to be a sometimes jarring, sometimes stagnant seven minutes. To me, it seems that the Michigan boy-o’s poppier, Leave Luck to Heaven sensibilities would have been better suited for this otherwise excellent release.

Kompakt / 136
[James Jung]