After the industrial strength artist album from Ben Klock on Ostgut Ton earlier in the year, which left some feeling a little too chilly the label have followed up with a decidedly warmer twelve from Berlin resident Nick Hoeppner. Makeover is nevertheless cloaked with a deep and brooding atmosphere, but there are touches of house licking around the edges of the clubby techno that immediately lightened the mood.
The tribal percussion is sparingly used, and is balanced with more synthetic overtones that spells out a mutual meeting point between the two genres. Foundling on the flip side performs a similar trick, but trades off the vocal touches that inhabited Makeover for some gently evolving chords and a small dose of acid. Both tracks appeal to earthier side of the Ostgut and Berghain sound and continue the impeccable run that this vanguard label is on.
Meanwhile on the other side of the Atlantic, Mathew Jonson and his jazzy cohorts who have been notably quiet since the 23 Seconds album return with a new release for their Cobblestone Jazz project. A good deal more accessible than Jonson’s own twisted productions, the Cobblestone Jazz flavour often plays around with vocoders and always injects a helping of adapted jazz into the mix. The two tracks on Traffic Jam are no exception; first up Fiesta is a mixture of lilting vocal melodies squashed through a vocoder giving the track a robotic pop appeal. The keyboards are at Cobblestone’s usual level of wonky brilliance, though the title track pushes things even further with a big booming arpeggio line wriggling around some comparatively straight forward chord stabs. The jazzy ethos can be found sneaking around the fills about two thirds of the way through the track, though it’s in no way an indication that Traffic Jam is a relaxed little moody groover; it’s a mentalist journey through the streets with no brain. Both sides absolutely vital purchases from a still brilliant Cobblestone Jazz.
I thought a couple of years back that I knew DJ Koze’s style pretty well and could almost pick his tracks out at a club on first listen. Lately though he’s been upping his game even further, first with the recent free download only track The Spitzer Ebb Group and now with the insanely out-of-leftfield Mrs Bojangles twelve. Dr Fuck is a demented, detuned visit to the scariest medical practitioner you could ever have the misfortune of being examined by. Koze drops his voice several octaves and runs it through a few modulators and starts blathering on about how his alter ego Kosi feels about house music, all the while clanging a old cow bell or some rusty old pots and pans. The chief melody seems to wrought from some kind of horn or accordion that’s run back on itself but there’s so much else going on that rather than sit still and pick out individual elements you’d be better off just losing yourself to its unbridled, unhinged funk. This track is set for major dance floor carnage so go pester a disc jock in the know to drop it on a nice loud system post haste. Mrs Bojangles lightens the mood somewhat but is just as twisted, Koze making an absolute mockery of anyone attempting to release a straight forward house track by showing them just how far you can move the genre into the land of fruitiness. The only thing predictable about DJ Koze’s tracks is that you can always expect them to blow out the framework of what you think is possible within the realms of a dance record and that’s one predictability I could happily get used to.
Nick Hoeppner - Makeover/Foundling
****
Ostgut Tontraeger comes up trumps again with a deep hybrid of techno house for the late hour dancers.
Cobblestone Jazz - Traffic Jam
****
Wonky Canadian electronics from Mathew Jonson and crew make you forget it’s been over two years since the 23 Seconds masterpiece.
DJ Koze - Mrs Bojangles
*****
One of the most fucked up slabs of vinyl you’re likely to hear this year, an unsurprising coup for Kosi.
Silverbeat’s Top 5
DJ Koze - Dr Fuck
Cobblestone Jazz - Traffic Jam
STL - Silent State
Actress - Ghosts Have A Heaven
Quantec - The Landing
Classic
Brian Eno - Music For Airports
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