Kompakt HHV Records 138 Items

HARDT ANTOINE is a London based DJ producer of French and West Indian descent, who continuously combines his hugely colourful and eclectic taste in music. He has also made a name for himself with his Reculture label and club nights

For over two decades Bjørke has cut his own path, as a solo artist and enthusiastic collaborator. Bjørke’s Copenhagen home may be one of Europe’s great cultural hubs, and he’s certainly added a paragraph or two to that story, but his music is distinctly international. Even a cursory listen exposes an impressive, ever-evolving career. However, few expected him to initiate the collaborative ambient / neo-classical project Kasper Bjørke Quartet. In 2018 The Fifty Eleven Project was released on Kompakt Records, a deeply personal record that musically documents Bjørkes encounter with, and triumph over, cancer. The album topped many critics' lists, and was included among The Guardian’s Best Contemporary Albums of the year.

Mother, which will be released on October 28th, represents a quantum leap forward. Literally, when you consider the terrestrial shifts that informed it. Six compositions explore what the evolution of our planet sounds like. While Holst may have gotten there first, Mother singularly focuses on the orb where we reside, from its formation, to its likely conclusion. Other artists have tackled song cycles that parallel a day, a year, or even a lifetime. Mother spans a timeframe from 4.5 billion years ago up to humankind’s impending demise. It hints at how that may be sooner than we think, as well as the earth’s resilience, and the promise of another chapter.

Additional gravity comes courtesy of evocative choir arrangements - - and marimba recorded at the Copenhagen Opera House. “Formation” condenses 20 million years of runaway accretion into 20 minutes. It is sublimely padded by feature artist Sofie Birch’s gentle synths. “Abiogenesis” intimates a different type of emergence: the first life to inhabit our nascent planet. The entire cosmos is condensed into the layered vocals of Philip|Schneider. Birch returns on “Miocene,” which signals the divergence of proto-humans from primates not with foreboding, but rather cascaded notes and swells adumbrating a pure and curious being, revealing nothing of what the Catch-22 of knowledge will bring. That’s addressed in the diptych of “Anthropocene” and “Tipping Points,” respectively marking the dawn and foreshadowing the probable downfall of homosapians, through wondrous advancements and their climate damaging byproducts. It’s tempting to think the album’s finale, “Requiem,” implies only a dark conclusion, owing to its sparkling verrillon’s coronach, and the return of Philip|Schneider’s empyrean vocals, but its juxtaposition with revolving, enigmatic piano chords infers the earth will enter its next act.

Mother is a staggering achievement, encouraging contemplative thought. The album is released October 28th on Kompakt Records, both digitally and on limited edition double vinyl. The atwork is designed by multidisciplinary artist Trevor Jackson.

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.

A download code is included.

"Expect the unexpected," they say, and it should come as a surprise to many as we warmly welcome to the KOMPAKT family one of America’s most celebrated producers in dance music, JOHN TEJADA! Born in Austria, he relocated to his current home of Los Angeles at the age of 8 and, following a brief career in hip-hop, found his home in electronic music. If you're even the slightest fan of the genre, you’ll be hard-pressed not to have heard his music over his decade long career. Whether on his own Palette Recordings, Poker Flat, or Plug Research — plus a Fabric Mix CD under his belt, it’s thanks to a steady stream of massive releases (think “Mono On Mono” and “Sweat On The Walls”) that he remains a mainstay in the charts of Beatport and uncountable DJs. He is also half of the long-standing City Centre Offices act, I’m Not A Gun (together with Takeshi Nishimoto). “I wanted to experiment with some longer phrases again and to step away from the analog sequencers more and get back to using my hands to create the melodies. I also feel for the first time in quite a while I've made an album of songs for myself without worrying about the usual pressures.” Resident Advisor called Tejada “one of the most notoriously meticulous producers around" — an unmistakable proof lies within these recordings. Genres collide and combine with an unraveling of blissful layers on “Parabolas”. The opening track, “Farther & Fainter,” offers a musicality today's techno and house often lack — an accomplishment that resonates throughout the album. Tracks such as “Subdivided” and “Unstable Condition” reflect the wondrousness of Aphex Twin’s Polygon Window project, something that could only be reanimated and brought to 2011's standards by Tejada. “Parabolas” is a true highlight in John Tejada’s deep catalogue. Bold words indeed for a producer who is known for unexpected variation and tremendous musical imagination.

Important Note: Unfortunately THE Sides ARE Reversed ON THE Vinyl, I.E. THE A-side IS THE B-side AND Vice Versa. With THE Purchase OF THE Vinyl OR THE CD YOU Will GET THE Single MP3 Files AS Well AS A Continous MIX VIA E-mail. With the cover artwork for Pop Ambient 2022, longtime Kompakt graphic artist Veronika Unland has once again outdone herself. Following the almost baroque, blood-red and jet-black, extremely physical sculptures of Pop Ambient 2021, which emerged from a dark, floral sea like bodies erect for dancing, the front of 2022 is adorned with a pastel-white form, intertwined, folded many times and crisscrossed with delicate shading, which seems to float on a pale pink background; soft, gentle waves woven from Venetian colors that leave the viewer puzzled: Is it a flower, a coral, a mollusk?

Again, the current edition of the tradition-steeped compilation series curated by Wolfgang Voigt is about the persistent and ever-necessary definition of beauty, of reduction, of electronic music of heavy lightness and light heaviness, of ambient's eternal promise of a state of physical and acoustic weightlessness and Pop's of redemption. And about the question why a never arbitrary combination of soundscape, drones, samples and loops, put together in a certain way, can create this feeling of warmth, depth and space, - something three-dimensional, where the imagination feels at home as a fish in the water or a bird in the sky. A key aesthetic stimulus that sends all the senses into a slow glide and drift, after which your synapses feel like they've been bathed in essential oil. Next to Soul, Ambient is probably the most effective musical healing plant of mankind.

Behind the aural test tubes, the who's who of Pop Ambient is once again at work, led for the first time by the highly trafficked Californian duo Blank Gloss, whose debut album "Melt" this year was certified by The Guardian as nothing less than "heartaching beauty". Yui Onodera's "Chrome" as well as "Kari", a cooperation of Markus Guentner and Joachim Spieth, could also be imagined in the score of Denis Villeneuve's new film version of Dune - however, colleague Hans Zimmer managed that quite well without the three. After such wonderful and stylish contributions by Reich & Würden, Triola and Thomas Fehlmann, the ear then lingers a bit longer on the ghostly "Weiht" by Morgen Wurde feat. Maria Estrella, a track like a temple of sound, a deep electronic immersion in a Japanese onsen. In this sea of unnameable time you could sink forever, but with the tracks of Andrew Thomas, Thore Pfeiffer and Max Würden & Pepo Galán the journey slowly comes to an end.

Total turns 21 this year, and Kompakt’s venerable compilation series couldn’t have asked for a more auspicious coming-of-age collection. If Total 20 was consolidation against the odds, the Kompakt crew producing for a dreamt-of dancefloor in an uncertain future, then Total 21 feels abuzz and alive with possibilities. Significantly, it’s the first Total in some time that’s streamlined down to a single disc; this makes Total 21 even punchier than usual, a joyous, reflective, and always thrilling 75-minute audio scan of the world according to Kompakt.

As with every instalment of Total, there’s a deft balancing here of Kompakt regulars and new blood. Of the latter, there’s a first appearance by Kollmorgen, remixed by Patrice Bäumel into an astral torch song; Amsterdam’s Nicky Elisabeth, offering up Roman FLÜGEL’s pulsating, arpeggiated remix of “Celeste”; and Captain Mustache swoops down into view, Play Paul in tow, with the dream-like electro lift-off that is “Everything”. Jonathan Kaspar also drops by with a new track, “Von Draussen”, a stealthy and lethal floor-hugger with prowling bass.

Elsewhere, there’s the lead track to Michael Mayer’s astonishing recent EP, “Brainwave Technology”, which not-so-gently spears the tech-futurist babble of AI, transhumanism and posthumanism, soundtracked by one of Mayer’s typically lush, glimmering soundscapes. John Tejada reaches back to the heyday of glitch and dub techno with the gorgeous “Spectral Progressions”, while the brothers Voigt & Voigt, on “Nicht Mein Job”, seem reinvigorated by the interwoven patterns and funky minimalism of the Profan days. Not to be outdone, Jürgen Paape kicks Total 21 with “La Guittara Romantica”, a chiming and lilting lullaby for woozy late-night reflection.

Throughout, it feels as though Kompakt are taking a moment to both breathe in the dust of the past and look forward to a bright future. Perhaps that’s why, on “Fasson”, Sascha Funke seems so confident, with pinprick melodies bouncing around a hall of audio mirrors, or why THE Bionaut returns with “Blue Sky Motor Lodge”, a song so moistly melancholy, so enduringly lovely, it’ll make you weep tears of joy. Robag Wruhme gets a little delirious on the ticking, twisting “No”, and then GUI Boratto mops everything up with the bubbling, bumping glam-stomp “Wake Up”.

That’s not all – spring for the digital and/or vinyl edition and you’ll get a new cut, “Happy”, from Michael Mayer, and Marc Romboy & C.A.R.’s “I Am A Dancer”. But however you choose to play it, now Total’s turned 21, it’s your duty to throw it the celebration to end all celebrations. Let the party begin, and don’t forget to bring a party favo

Aufmerksamen Kompakt-Fans dürfte der Name Nicky Elisabeth schon seit einiger Zeit ein Begriff sein. Anfang 2019 schloß sich Nicky Kompakt an und wurde fortan immer öfter nicht nur auf Kompakt Events, sondern auch im Line Up renommierter Festivals (u.a. Dgtl, Strafwerk) und Clubs gesichtet. Und wer erinnert sich nicht an die legendäre “Kompakt Pop Up Party“ im Oktober 2019 während des Amsterdam Dance Events, gestreamt live aus Nicky’s Wohnzimmer, wo sie gemeinsam mit Michael Mayer und Rex The Dog endgültig unsere Herzen im Strum eroberte?

Nicky Elisabeth lebt und arbeitet in Amsterdam und gehört zu den Resident-DJs von De Marktkantine, einem der etabliertesten Clubs der holländischen Hauptstadt und langjähriger Gastgeber von Kompakt Parties aller Art. Wer einmal eine dieser Parties dort erlebt hat, der findet viel von der besonderen Atmosphäre und dem druckvollen Sound dieser Nächte in Nicky’s Kompakt-Debüt 12inch “Celeste“.

Es liegt nahe, die beiden Tracks “Celeste“ und “Say“ wie eine Art liebevolle Hommage an den Kompakt-Sound der letzten drei Jahrzehnte zu interpretieren. Mit sparsamen Mitteln gelingt es Nicky ihren beiden Tracks ein Maximum an Energie und Catchiness zu entlocken, immer getragen von einem sicheren Instinkt für Breaks und dem richtigen Timing für kleine Eskalationen – etwas, was gute DJs einfach im Blut haben. Es geht am Ende immer um die Dramaturgie.

Die beiden Remixes des Titeltracks “Celeste“ aus den Händen der Großmeister Robag Wruhme und Roman Flügel sind nicht weniger “celestial“ (himmlisch) als das Original. Vor allem Robag Wruhme verleiht dem Stück in seiner Bearbeitung etwas wunderbar Schwebendes und Träumerisches, wie es ihm zuletzt auch auf seiner 12Inch “Yes/Calma Calma (kom EX 115) gelungen war. Roman baut hier und da kleine Dekonstruktionen ein, täuscht mal links, mal rechts an, um sich schließlich doch vom gutgelaunten Neunziger Jahre Vibe mitreissen lassen. Man kann es kaum erwarten, all dies endlich wieder auf der Tanzfläche erleben zu dürfen.

A download code is included. It’s 2020, the year Pop Ambient turns twenty-one years old, a spritely young adult waltzing out of its teenage joys and tears. Pop Ambient has always stood for a certain classicism and elegance, a kind of beatless music that’s diaphanous and hazy, gossamer and glittering. It’s a music that’s no less inviting for its slow pace and becalmed nature, with a different kind of tension bubbling under the surface. For twenty-one years, Kompakt co-founder Wolfgang Voigt has curated a series of peerless compilations that repeatedly find refreshing answers to a simple question – What happens when the dancefloor is empty, and everyone’s home to drift away?

Italy’s AGENTS OF TIME have long been on the KOMPAKT radar. It started thanks to their exemplary releases on Correspondant and other labels such as Stem, Ellum plus last year’s collaboration with Mathew Jonson (from whom their name is inspired by). Michael Mayer had chance to play with them last summer at one of their Obscura parties and their friendship was cemented. Which leads us now to their five track KOMPAKT debut, entitled MUSIC MADE PARADISE. From our early days of releasing landmark tracks from JUSTUS KÖHNCKE, the label has never been shy of exploring the enigmatic fringes of disco in our own way. AGENTS OF TIME follow these footsteps but head into galactic territory with MUSIC MADE PARADISE. They continue their knack for bridging synth-wave with modern bass rhythms in a means which are purely designed for today’s dance floors. We’re proud to make their label debut with an incredible selection of music from this talented trio. French touch meets Italo chic on Drive Me Crazy. At first, My Heart is A Microchip comes across as a segue track, but opens into cascading synths and a predatory breakbeat to lead its own charge. Under Control is classy Moroder disco brought to the modern age. Aptly titled Interstate 10 is an EP highlight – the percussion lead is infectious and ready for prime time exploration.

“1929 - Das Jahr Babylon" marks Thomas Fehlmann's third full length release of 2018 and presents what appears to be a creative peak in his career that spans beyond his solo career to his early days in Palais Schaumburg, collaborating with Moritz von Oswald as 3MB to his long time work with The Orb. Having left The Orb in late 2017 has set free unforeseen energies in Fehlmann's studio. A departure from his recent dance floor-friendly album "Los Lagos" (KOM388, KOMCD148) released in September on Kompakt, Thomas Fehlmann's “1929 - Das Jahr Babylon" is a film soundtrack from the documentary that aired on ARD network on September 30, 2018 and is now available as a podcast series. To compliment the internationally lauded TV series "Berlin Babylon", German director Volker Heise has created a documentary about 1929, the fateful year during Germany's "Weimarer Republik" in which "Berlin Babylon" is settled. Heise's stirring documentary portrays Germany's sizzling capital that is faced with radical changes by the dark forces whom are about to toss the world into the abyss we know as World War II.

We continue The Orb's Sin In Space remix EP series with a third volume focussing on the duo's latest full-length, the highly acclaimed COW / Chill Out, World! (KOMPAKT 354 CD 134). The spontaneous, organic vibe and sample artistry of the album is reflected in three distinct reworks from highly respected Kompakt mainstays The Field, Dave DK and Jörg Burger - all of them informed with surprising twists and displaying a clear lineage to the source material. The Field's remix of 9 Elms Over River Eno takes the original's percussive part and unfolds it to a swirling, tropical epic that alludes as much to The Orb's multifaceted sound collages as it does to the hypnotic, looping flow of The Field's own output. Meanwhile, DAVE DK turns in a club-friendly revamp of 4am Exhale with the fittingly titled Accellerator Mix, indulging in exquisitely lyrical glitches and the magic of the straight bassdrum. Jörg Burger takes a shot at the beatless 5th Dimensions with the excellent Dschungeloper Mix - its loose pop jam feeling and flirty shuffle rhythm recall Burger's lush lounge core efforts under his Triola monicker.

A download code is included. Following their much-acclaimed surprise debut album Vermont from 2014, Motor City Drum Ensemble’s Danilo Plessow and Innervisions' Marcus Worgull reunite for more synth daydreaming on the suitably titled “II”. The new outing continues where the first full-length left off, strolling further down the luminous and undulating path that the duo turned into, influenced in equal measures by kosmische, krautrock, minimal wave and synth soundtracks.

Coma prove again their knack for unconventional, but catchy hooks. The release includes Robag Wruhme and Pional mixes.

With its glistening melodies and rousing beats, Weval's Easier EP displays a staggering sense for danceable drama - spread over four expertly crafted tracks that will speak to your hearts and feet through radiant synths, ardent vocal snippets and sublime melodies.

Dettinger’s Intershop and Oasis have long been held, by many fans of ambient and electronic music, to be some of the finest albums in their field. Produced by the mysterious Olaf Dettinger, about whom not much is publicly known, they were some of the earliest full-lengths released by the then-nascent Kompakt, and in many ways, they both articulated and defined the sound that would come to be known as Pop Ambient, while also existing, somehow, to the leftfield of any clearly recognisable genre.

Beautiful, sui generis works, it is a rare pleasure to see them being reissued on vinyl for a new generation of listeners to embrace. Originally released on CD only in 1999, Intershop was Kompakt’s first artist full-length. The music here simmers and broods, with opulent banks of tone marking out territory for rhythms that seem to be built from the clacking detritus of technology – hisses, thunks, knocks. Bass is deployed carefully, each drop a dubbed-out depth charge; drones spin and spiral, warping and weaving between the beats.

Oasis, released in 2000, refined the palette that Dettinger had explored on its predecessor. A blurred crusade of ambient texturology, its unassuming patterns, and subtle, incremental dynamics, admit to real beauty, and a kind of abstract sensuality that you don’t often experience with music that is, perhaps, similarly tooled, but not as poetic. Through seemingly simple gestures – whether lushly expansive repetitions, hyper-acute tremolo tones, or ear-tickling rhythms – it builds complex emotional resonance. It’s no surprise to discover Oasis is held in high esteem by artists like Panda Bear of Animal Collective, who once said of Dettinger, “For us, he was the dude.”

There is, of course, other music to know Dettinger by, too – his three excellent EPs for Kompakt, Blond (1998), Puma and Totentanz (1999), the latter of which, Michael Mayer once argued, “invented dubstep.” There is also a small, yet graceful run of compilation contributions, many of which can be found on Kompakt’s Total and Pop Ambient series. All this music has plenty to recommend it, sharing a clarity of purpose, and a rare, human warmth and depth. But Intershop and Oasis are the releases that distil Dettinger’s singular vision, and allow him, should he wish, to claim his place as a modern master of ambient and electronic music.

Dettinger’s Intershop and Oasis have long been held, by many fans of ambient and electronic music, to be some of the finest albums in their field. Produced by the mysterious Olaf Dettinger, about whom not much is publicly known, they were some of the earliest full-lengths released by the then-nascent Kompakt, and in many ways, they both articulated and defined the sound that would come to be known as Pop Ambient, while also existing, somehow, to the leftfield of any clearly recognisable genre.

Beautiful, sui generis works, it is a rare pleasure to see them being reissued on vinyl for a new generation of listeners to embrace. Originally released on CD only in 1999, Intershop was Kompakt’s first artist full-length. The music here simmers and broods, with opulent banks of tone marking out territory for rhythms that seem to be built from the clacking detritus of technology – hisses, thunks, knocks. Bass is deployed carefully, each drop a dubbed-out depth charge; drones spin and spiral, warping and weaving between the beats.

Oasis, released in 2000, refined the palette that Dettinger had explored on its predecessor. A blurred crusade of ambient texturology, its unassuming patterns, and subtle, incremental dynamics, admit to real beauty, and a kind of abstract sensuality that you don’t often experience with music that is, perhaps, similarly tooled, but not as poetic. Through seemingly simple gestures – whether lushly expansive repetitions, hyper-acute tremolo tones, or ear-tickling rhythms – it builds complex emotional resonance. It’s no surprise to discover Oasis is held in high esteem by artists like Panda Bear of Animal Collective, who once said of Dettinger, “For us, he was the dude.”

There is, of course, other music to know Dettinger by, too – his three excellent EPs for Kompakt, Blond (1998), Puma and Totentanz (1999), the latter of which, Michael Mayer once argued, “invented dubstep.” There is also a small, yet graceful run of compilation contributions, many of which can be found on Kompakt’s Total and Pop Ambient series. All this music has plenty to recommend it, sharing a clarity of purpose, and a rare, human warmth and depth. But Intershop and Oasis are the releases that distil Dettinger’s singular vision, and allow him, should he wish, to claim his place as a modern master of ambient and electronic music.

2024 Repress

The original version of this gorgeous schlager techno track, released in august 2001 on Kompakt's Total 3, would put a smile on a lot of people's faces. Apart from the reworked original version, you'll get two sensational remixes: The one from Frankfurt's high-aesthete, super hipster, club- and label-owner with a three-letter name: Ata. Since the very beginning, his Playhouse label has always been a guarantee for finest German House music. It's his first (!) remix ever and his first studio work since the legendary first Playhouse release 'Holy Garage' in 1993. The 'Playhouse Mix' turns the original version into a mega-hip, late-night monster and reminds a bit of the great Larry Levan and Metro Area's congenious adaption of early-80s disco music. The 'Robert Johnson' club is going down on its knees. Wonderful. The other remix comes from one of Kompakt's in-house pioneers of pop ambient: it's Olaf Dettinger. Who didn't want to miss this chance and has interrupted his creative pause only for doing this wonderful 'Moonlight Mix'. Dettinger's cosy hi-tech sounds and Sonja Luebke's seraphic voice, both singing a duet to the moon. Very, very beautiful, indeed.

Dear gourmets of audio-aesthetic rapture, dear sound poets, please welcome - Pop Ambient 2024. Twenty-four. Twenty-four can be divided by two, four, six, eight, twelve and itself. If something can be divided by itself, it is not really divisible. Truthfulness knows no formulas. Beauty knows no formulas. Beauty saves the world for no reason whatsoever. “Beauty is a promise that beyond mediocrity there is something where calmness reigns. Beauty calms the nerves. Beauty is not a good intention but a fact. Beauty is provocation, rigor, responsibility. And beauty has its price”.

In addition to the official version of Pop Ambient 2024, there will be an art/music edition limited to 10 pieces, consisting of an exclusive mini bonus album (vinyl dubplate) from Blank Gloss, in combination with 10 individual fine art print artworks by Veronika Unland. The edition will be available via kompakt.fm/art exclusively on November 24th, 2023.

Ladies and Gentlemen please welcome, Pop Ambient 2024

It’s been a few years since Captain Mustache took a ride with Kompakt – 2021, to be exact, when he released the “Everything” single, and subsequently made an appearance on that year’s entry in the Total series. But this visionary French producer has been busy, indeed fiercely productive, ever since, appearing on Helena Hauff’s Return To Disorder and John Digweed’s Bedrock, collaborating with Dave Clarke, Popof, The Advent, Paris The Black Fu, Keith Tucker from Aux88... and two beautifully eloquent albums, Tourbillon Nocturne and Indigo Memories. But with The Super Album, Captain Mustache returns to Kompakt with his most sublime collection yet. On The Super Album, the Captain soundtracks an imagined “whole day for party people.” He welcomes friends old and new on board: opening with the poetic club banger of “About Love”, with guest appearance from Speakwave (aka dynArec), The Super Album shifts gears into the lush, sunny “Shifting Basslines”, where Captain Mustache’s pulsing electro-disco is the perfect fit for a third collaboration with electroclash pioneers Chicks on Speed. After the deep techno pulsations of “Laser Me” and the glitzy pop shine of “Gimme Ya Mustache”, more guests arrive: Arnaud Rebotini of Black Strobe on the slinky “I Love Watching U”, and then a spoken cameo from the truly legendary French disco diva Amanda Lear on “Mustache Of The Universe”, a glitzy glitterball of a song that’s shrouded in ghostly synths. All those tracks appear on the 12” version of The Super Album – download the digital version and you get six more slices of Mustache magic. Here, the narrative turns more insular, more dancefloor focused – the party people have moved through the daytime and they’re in their element, diving deep into the night-time economy. The album spirals, beautifully, into stark electro, driving techno, with great moments of beauty and melancholy – see the pointillist arpeggios of “Everything” (which features Play Paul), the disco stomp of “Acapulco Citron”, and a breath-taking double-bill of stripped back psychedelic electro on “Pulsions Organiques”, and the layered, luscious, swooning “Clair-Obscur”. From there, it’s an astral glide into the Dopplereffekt-ish “Galaxian Symbiosis” before Foremost Poets join Captain Mustache to wave the night goodbye with the brittle, brilliant “Floorwax”. It’s a day in the life, but all in service to the pleasures of nightlife; the dancefloor is The Super Album’s beacon, your body the pliable material moulded into evocative new shapes by this dense, hypnotic, brilliantly pop album.

The formidable Rex The Dog returns with his first single for Kompakt in three years, “Change This Pain For Ecstasy”, a slow-burning disco-glitter stomp that’s charged with analog energy. Pushing his self-built modular hardware set-up to its limits, “Change This Pain For Ecstasy” is taut and thrilling, stripped-back and pulsating, with sweeping chords shimmering through a classic Moroder arpeggio, as a delirious voice sings out a psychedelic raver’s plaint for liberation, pleading for you to "take away my sorrow and this pain”. Deeply emotional, it’s also a masterwork in tension and release, dizzy with snare-rush peaks, and dark, humid valleys where Rex is bound to the patchbay.

On the flipside, Rex gives us “Moto”, which tickles your ear with cymatic phenomena, its gentle vibrations building, beautifully, into a monster-piece of stealth techno. Rex’s DIY synths work overtime as he chases patterns and phases through circuitry, wielding the tones until they erupt into a spray of pointillist pizzicato. The sounds here crackle and corrode, the textures so tantalizing, so sensual, you can almost grab hold of them with your hands. It’s great to have Rex The Dog back, making livewire, yet deeply human techno, alive and bursting with electricity.

CD included, side B is VG, rest VG+.

It's with great pleasure that we announce the return of New York's synth wizard Steve Moore to KOMPAKT - pretty much exactly 10 years after his much lauded first appearance 'Bayern Kurve' on our SPEICHER series. Steve Moore is widely recognized as one half of Italo Disco-tinged horror-prog project ZOMBI, his numerous thriller movie soundtrack works (The Guest, VFW, Mayhem, Bliss, The Mind's Eye) as well has his clubbier output on Ron Morelli's L.I.E.S. imprint.

A download code is included. Pop Ambient Music is medicine against illnesses, that you don’t even suffer from. It’s giving everything, demanding nothing. Musical lotus leafs, off which the virtual wastewater of our time is rolling like the reality is dripping off the matrix. In this sense, we’re happy about the pop-ambient anniversary greetings from new and old companions like Thore Pfeiffer, Max Würden, Yui Onodera, Jörg Burger, Thomas Fehlmann, Morgen Wurde, Leandro Fresco aswell as contributions from T.Raumschmiere, Andrew Thomas and, after a long break, from friends from early days like Joachim Spieth, Markus Guentner und Klimek.

2 highly effective techno bangers that will become the weapon of choice for any DJ looking for momentum.

Writing on labels.

With his new album, Year Of The Living Dead, Vienna-born and LA-based producer John Tejada finds a blissful extended moment of balance between the new and the familiar. Anyone who’s followed his career to date, which has included four previous albums for Kompakt, outings for storied labels like Plug Research, Playhouse and Cocoon, and numerous remixes and collaborations – most recently, his Wajatta duo with actor and musician Reggie Watts – will immediately sense the warmth and eloquence that Tejada brings to his gilded, pliant techno and electro hybrids. But there’s more here, too; an explorer’s glimmer in the producer’s eye, as he gets to grips with new ways of working and being, while offering a reflective opening for the listener, something echoed in artwork by graphic designer and ‘contemplative artist’ David Grey. “The album was started using tools I was unfamiliar with, which became an interesting exploratory process,” Tejada says. “Staying away from the obvious and having to re-learn simple things was a fun challenge.” You can hear these new creative pulsions pushing the eight tracks on Year Of The Living Dead ever-forward; the album has an unique cast, and though there are trace elements of the genres Tejada has indulged previously, he’s never quite put them together this way before. There’s the dubwise glitter sprinkled across the moody opener “The Haunting Of Earth”, the kind caresses found amongst the deftly woven textures of “Sheltered”, and the churchy melancholy, all hymnal and golden, of “Echoes Of Life”. Year Of The Living Dead also speaks obliquely to its moment, though Tejada works this implicitly, allowing the strange circumstances of 2020 to cast their inevitable shadow without being obvious or didactic. “The production process began right before lockdown and continued through what felt like a very serious time for all of us,” he recalls. “Not being able to see or touch our loved ones made me feel we are all like ghosts. We can observe from a distance but cannot really be there. We are isolated and alone.” And yet, Year Of The Living Dead’s tenderness offers an out for that anxiety and loneliness, its intimate immensities gifting the album a redemptive and compassionate core. Compact and glistening, Year Of The Living Dead sculpts unassuming beauty.

Hey, Rex The Dog is back and his lasers are stronger than ever. Throw your hands in the air and watch your fingers drop one by one. No, you won't feel pain. As much damage "Crasher" does - it's cause and relief in one.

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It is a stirring blend of early Kompakt vibes, ‘Schaffel’ throwbacks, updated sawtooth techno and lush ambient sounds for the ambitious dancefloor.

Tired of grey skies and long faces? We’ve got a serious dose of musical vitamin D for you! This 12" is the inauguration of a new split EP format on Kompakt. More hits on one record. Less environmental impact. Everybody wins.

Deer Jade – Jukurpa

Deer Jade is hailing from the picturesque Lake of Geneva, an area about which the late Jean Paul Belmondo had to say a thing or two. Her infectious smile and uplifting energy behind the decks already made her a household name in clubs and festivals around the globe. This solo debut is an expression of her strong self confidence and in-syncness with the world surrounding her. “Jukurpa” might be just one of the most flamboyant house tunes you’ll come across this year, readymade for swaying to on an early summer morning dancefloor. “Cosmic Dream” is of a more introspective nature, putting gentle psychedelic synth movements to good use. There’s a lot of heart in Deer Jade’s music. We’re happy to give it a home.

David Hasert & Niconé – Wasting My Time With You

This Cologne – Berlin joint venture is shedding rays of sun galore with this lost in reverie deep house jam. Built around a catchy as hell soul vocal and occasional piano outbursts “Wasting My Time With You” will certainly be one of our favorite tunes to waste our time to in 2024.

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