Pitchfork

In other words, judging a mix CD is harder than it seems, especially in a day when skillz are optional. Not to be too meta, but the mix CD is essentially a meta affair, a compilation that transcends the sum of its parts through some nameless other that hovers over the proceedings, call it what you like: coherence, flow, artistry.

Going by these criteria, Dominik Eulberg sets himself a few critical hurdles with his first official mix CD-- a doublepack released on his own Mischwald label. I'm guessing that Kreucht & Fleucht was mixed digitally, based on the precision of each seamless transition. (If it wasn't, this guy is a freaking mixing machine). It also leans heavily on 2005's underground-to-middleground techno hits, caned-to-death (and occasionally comped-to-death) cuts like John Tejada's "Paranoia", Andre Kraml's "Safari", and Nathan Fake's "Dinamo". Suffice to say that eclecticism isn't Eulberg's priority; Kreucht & Fleucht is a decidedly internal affair, a guide to the Now Sound of clattery, post-minimalist German techno.

Well, so be it, because the selection is impeccable. Tunes like "Dinamo" are ubiquitous for a reason: They fucking work on the dance floor. And Eulberg's ear-- he's also one of this scene's most in-demand remixers-- finds hidden themes that run through both discs like underground streams, weaving together atonal clanks, sawtooth leads, 8-bit stutter, and grand, epic melodies until you have no idea where one track ends and the other begins.

Kreucht, which means something like "Creeping," is the darker of the two discs, given over to the psychedelic end of minimal techno. Tracks from Luciano, Ricardo Villalobos (in a 2002 appearance as Termiten, one of the album's true surprises), A. Vivanico, and Guido Schneider (remixing Dub Kult) are peppered with chirps and twitters and all kinds of bug funk. Gothic-leaning anthems-- Triola's "Leuchtturm (Wighnomy's Polarzipper Rexmi)", Michael Mayer's "Lovefood (Matias Aguayo Mix)"-- crest like bobbing forest canopy above the pitter-patter below. Voices are carried aloft on winds of reverb. When not hunched over his computer, Eulberg is a naturalist, and judging by Kreucht, his woods aren't just wild, they're haunted.

If you know that Fleucht means "Flying," you'll see where we're going on disc two. Starting with Eulberg's out-of-orbit remix of Steve Barnes' hypno-house instant classic "Cosmic Sandwich", and cruising through tracks like Metope's grinding, weightless "Libertango", James Holden's remix of "Safari", and Eulberg's mix of "Dinamo", Fleucht is all nougat, whipped up and up. (You almost have to hand it to Eulberg for not including Closer Musik's "1, 2, 3 No Gravity", if only because it would have been too perfect a fit.) With Tonetraeger's "Welcome Back, Kotter (Mayer-Thomas Remix)"-- another of the mix's great rediscoveries-- we come dangerously close to burning up on re-entry; those buzzing, frictive chords could strip the insulation off the sturdiest spaceship. But Fleucht's last four tracks are pure, tranced-out bliss for people who think they hate trance, all chiming arpeggio, insistent ostinato, and hearts-beating-as-one kicks.

By the end, not even the most jaded listeners will care that the majority of these cuts are from 2005-- unless you're Ricardo Villalobos or Michael Mayer, you probably haven't heard them all anyway. And the how of the mix is a red herring, because the why leaps out at every pulse and stutter. An American-based friend praises it as a home-listening album, but expresses doubt as to how such a set would go over on a dance floor outside Germany. Does it even matter? Consider it a biodome, an ant farm, or a black forest of the mind; Kreucht & Fleucht is its own microsystem, a lab slide that magnifies to lay bare the workings of the whole ecology of house and techno, if you listen right. Now that's what I call music indeed.