Buy/stream: https://kompakt.fm/releases/total_22

It’s common knowledge that KOMPAKT’s TOTAL series serves as our yearbook, a musical wrap up of the past 12 months. Therefore it doesn’t come as a surprise that this year’s edition is informed by another pandemic year, where dancefloors were still mostly deserted and the devastating developments in Eastern Europe. Kompakt’s A&R team still kept on foot on the imaginary dancefloor, while scouting different realms apart from the big room euphoria. Anyway, brain dance has always been a key ingredient to our catalogue.

The Voigt brothers are opening this year´s vinyl edition in an unusually romantic fashion. ‘Why’ combines a bubbly FM bassline with lush washes of looped guitars. High off the (presumably high) heels of her recent album ‘Jesus Was An Alien’ she delivers a spanking new excursion into her sonic world, ‘The Hill’. Our Mexican friend Rebolledo makes his first ever solo appearance on TOTAL with his trademark hypnotic desert sound. Jürgen Paape is calling a spade a spade with ‘Le Monde À Changé’ – The world has changed indeed. Our prodigal son, Matias Aguayo, returns to the mothership with ‘Cinco Y Rojo’. An exercise in Chicago-esque groove theory paired with a cheeky visitor from Denmark. Spot the reference and win a pair of hooves. It’s hard to find a quality party around Cologne without Jonathan Kaspar on its bill. Rightly so, as he continues to hone his craft as an impeccable DJ and producer. Michael gives the tremendously talented Danish singer songwriter eee gee a proper Mayer treatment and Kompakt founding member Jörg Burger closes off the festivities with a groovy midtempo chugger that reminisces ‘Blue Lines’ era Massive Attack as much as the late Andy Weatheralls low slung psychedelia.

Total 22

Jürgen Paape - Le Monde A Changé feat. Bruno

Buy/stream: https://kompakt.fm/releases/velvet_desert_music_vol_3_lp_7_dl

Kompakt unveils the third volume of Jörg Burger’s “Velvet Desert Music” compilation series, dedicated to music that hits the sweet spot between the cinematic, the (pop) ambient, and the psychedelic. With “Velvet Desert Music Vol. 3”, Burger and his friends wander afar, taking trips away from, or adjacent to, the dancefloor that’s acted so long as the crucible for the Kompakt aesthetic. Like its predecessors, it’s a gorgeous, lambent collection of late-night mood music.

Because it’s such a broad church, “Velvet Desert Music” admits all kinds of new experiences, as well, with Burger looking for music that “goes beyond the desert to explore different corners of the velvet universe”. Indeed, of all the volumes in the series, this third installment feels closest to an album made by a true collective. The roster has changed, with new contributors Flug 8 and Seb Martel, both with his trio Las Ondas Marteles and with Chocolate Genius and Zsela as La Finca, joining regulars The Novotones, Mount Obsidian, The Golden Bug, Paulor and Sascha Funke.

Burger himself shows up alongside Fritz Ackermann of The Novotones and Max Würden and Thore Pfeiffer, in The Velvet Circle. Their contributions are pure lush life electronica: “Our Tribe” hitches a ride with a low-slung groove, flickering psychedelic reels of acoustic guitar traipsing across moody bass and taffeta layers of drone; their opening remix of Flug 8’s “Puerto Rico” gently introduces the album with softly tangling electronic tones, while guitars, drenched in reverb, pirouette in the background. Mount Obsidian’s remix of Burger´s The Black Frame “Sacrosanct” spins around the listeners ears like a kaleidoscope catching the reflections the sun makes in San Luis Potosí’s ornately decorated churches.

La Finca’s electronics and voice miniature, “What Clouds Say”, is a masterclass in poetic restraint; Martel’s “Dark Mambo”, remixed by Burger, is one of the collection’s big surprises, for it indeed does what the title says, a drifting, surrealist take on the mambo form, full of pensive chords, rich with unrequited longing, a breathy saxophone whispering under the song’s sly rhythmic carriage.

Old friends reappear, too: Golden Bug’s “Es Cucuruc” is a muted slow burner. The Novotones chime in with a slyly propulsive, Krautrock-esque charmer, “Liberty Bell”, and the guitar-led tone-drift of “Valley of Oblivion”; Paulor’s “The Last Coke in the Desert” is a chiming, lilting dreamscape; Mount Obsidian are joined again by vocalist Charlotte Jestaedt for two modern takes on early-hours art song, „Fade“ and „Marole“, the closing track of the compilation, which is a spooked requiem for times passed. Sascha Funke’s “Mathias Rust” is a lavish dancefloor dream, vocal samples drifting through the song as it slowly envelops the listener in its opulent radiance.

What’s most compelling about “Velvet Desert Music Vol. 3”, perhaps, is the way everything sits together so tightly, so neatly – it’s the album in the series so far that feels the most like it’s been made by collaborators in one long, playful session of experiment and exploration; everyone’s on the same page, exploring the fractured wastelands, dust squalls, sunburnt scapes and psychedelic cacti of the psyche; burnt sienna, desert lilies and willows, fairy dusters, yucca and greasewood… an extravagance of blooming, riotous colour, erupting from the sun-cracked landscapes within each of us.

This is just a taste of the rich pleasures of Velvet Desert Music Vol. 3, a triumph of a compilation that takes the psychedelic visions of its predecessors and looks for the desert within, a dusty kiss, a road-movie hallucination flickering on the listener’s eyelids, a cinematic projection from deep inside the mind.

Velvet Desert Music Vol. 3

The Last Coke In The Desert

Paulor - The Last Coke In The Desert

Ellen Allien - My Tree (Ripperton Backlash Remix)

dOP - Blanche Neige

Half_Yo     back in to the space know and raise

Jacques Bon & Virgo Four - Machine Love (Superpitcher Extended Version)

PREMIERE > inverted-audio.com/premiere-leafar-legov-cenote

With ’Cenote' @leafarlegov doesn't stray far from his comfort zone. Decking out an hypnotic roll of chiselled percussions within visually-evocative nature-scapes as seesawing synth accents and dubby ripples instill a further languid touch to the solemn profoundness of Legov's production. An ode to contemplation and time, somewhere in a league of its own.

Leafar Legov - Cenote [KANN]

Rocket & Ponies have put together a special vinyl release for Record Store Day 2017 that finds Timo Maas & James Teej and Sebastian Mullaert serve up fantastic new remixes of classic Moby track ‘Porcelain’. These tracks released on a white label during Record Store Day 2017 sold-out within days, adding further weight to the Rockets & Ponies catalogue, which has been pioneering quality electronic music for almost a decade now.

Timo Maas is the long-time techno titan behind this label, and has partnered up with Canadian artist James Teej to great effect over recent years with a string of collaborations including the Grammy nominated reworking of Paul McCartney. Now the duo hook up again to serve up a Broken China Dub of Moby’s ’Porcelain’. Moby needs little introduction, as one of the figureheads for global dance music he has been pivotal in its development over the years and his seminal 1999 album ‘Play’, from which ‘Porcelain’ is taken, is an undeniable classic.

Maas & Teej’s vital new version is a trippy nine minute symphony of rubbery drums and synthetic synth sounds all run through with the smeared and heartbroken chords of the iconic original. The vocal cries and one finger piano notes also bring real emotion to the supple, rubbery groove and, as a result, this one is sure to make for plenty of teary-eyed moments on dancefloors, beaches, boat parties and terraces this summer.

Then comes Swedish artist Sebastian Mullaert, who has been turning out quality techno, minimal and IDM since the 90s both solo and as one half of Minilogue. From Mule to Hypercolour, Cocoon to Drumcode, he has recorded for the scene’s leading labels, never failing to deliver with each release. Mullaert is also a renowned vintage hardware junkie & sound engineer, who works from an incredible studio space on the edge of a nature reserve in Southern Sweden.

His masterful Transformation Mix is a fourteen minute opus that takes the listener on a trip through organic sound design, summery grooves and loose rhythms. It’s airy and feel good, dubby and infectious, and takes you ever higher with sumptuous strings and synths all oozing warmth and feel good vibes.

Beatport

Moby - Porcelain (Sebastian Mullaert's Transformation Mix)

Mathias Kaden - kawaba (dj koze's kosi san remix)

The world is turnin'
I hope it don't turn away
The world is turnin'
I hope it don't turn away

Joakim - On The Beach - Superpitcher Remix

Avocado Dreams

Cenote

Label, booking agency & online record shop

Demo submission: 
We receive a lot of demos every day. Please understand that we are unable to listen to everything. Send your private soundcloud link to: label@kompakt.fm.