Pitchfork

Recently, I was clicking through a music message board (you know the one), and spotted a thread entitled "Superpitcher Live In NYC". Turns out he travelled over from Germany to DJ recently. And the general consensus seems to be that he was good. But we've seen him play better.

How jaded we've all become in the last 48 months! In 2001, Kompakt's 10 or so CD releases were barely distributed in the U.S., their roster was a mystery (Michael Mayer? Jürgen Paape? Dettinger??) to anyone not paying close attention to post-Basic Channel German techno, and seeing any of them live in the U.S. (if they even played live) would be akin to catching a baby dinosaur walking down Avenue B at dusk. Some of those CD's weren't even that good! Will anyone stand up to make an argument for the ugly, blurting grooves of the first Schaffelfieber comp? Or the flat, gray Chain Reaction cribbing of Jonas Bering?

Of course, now Kompakt is huge: adopted by prog house and big-room trance jocks, hipster shorthand for techno in the 21st century, Mayer and crew regularly touring the planet. They were in Spin for chrissakes! 2001 was when that turn from anonymity to (a kind of) superstardom began, with the release of the Total 3 compilation. A mixture of disarmingly catchy vocal cuts and better-than average-intrumentals, Total 3 married techno and trance maneuvers to the kind of wistful, melancholic, or dark vibes that rock fans gravitate to in electronic music. (Cf. Aphex, Boards of Canada...hell, nearly all of the melodic side of IDM.)

By 2002, you could safely call Kompakt one of the most exciting labels in the world. For 12 months they knocked out one epochal record after another, be it artist LPs (Thomas Fehlmann, Closer Musik, Justus Köhncke, Kaito), DJ mixes (Friends, Immer), or comps (Total 4). The streak began to slow by 2003 when Total 5 debuted to middling reviews and, following a string of mediocre releases, its best record (Michael Mayer's Fabric 13 mix) wasn't even released on the label. 2004 saw its profile at the highest, with blanket press coverage and major U.S. DJ gigs for the Kompakt all-stars. It was also the label's weakest year on CD, with disappointing artist albums from Michael Mayer and Superpitcher, as well as the bloated, unrealized promise of Kompakt 100.

So it is with some natural trepidation that I approach Total 6, a 2xCD (uh-oh) collection of recent singles and exclusives. I grumbled and griped too, began to claim that they were being eclipsed by newer labels like Areal or Get Physical. I mean, obviously the zeitgeist has moved on, right? Microhouse is dead and everyone wants electro-house. Well, today I am a choad, because Total 6 is the best in the series since 3. Kompakt was never really microhouse anyway; leave that to your clicking, popping Perlons and Akufens. If any German house label was "electro-house" it was Kompakt. Just listen to Köhncke's "2 After 909", Closer Musik's "You Don't Know Me", or all those basslines. It's just that while they were electro-house they were a dozen other things besides.

Disc one contains all the "hits," from that alternate universe where Justus Köhncke is as big a star as 50 Cent (or at least Marvin Hamlisch). Speaking of which, he and Andreas Dorau's "Durch Die Nacht (Geiger Mix)" starts off as typical kozmik synth squiggle nonsense before itchy cocaine guitars, sweeping strings, and a faded vocal from an old record turn it into disco rescued from the Salvation Army. And his "Krieg" is fairly pro-forma electro-house, elevated by the trancey synth pad breakdown halfway through that burps and farts into a gurning, unresolved bleep-fest. "I Built This City" is probably the track that's received the most press so far, a Michael Mayer remix of a Baxendale (!) track. It opens with percussion that sounds like oil popping off a hot pan and chugging trance synths. The vocal is the most camp the label has ever touched (with some pretty stiff competition). The drums begin to speed up as an electro bassline bullies its way to the front of the mix. It finally bursts into a falsetto that makes Jake Shears sound like Phil Anselmo, designed to cause shirt-stripping amyl-nitrate hysteria on the floor. You will either love it or hate it.

Rex the Dog's "I Look Into Mid-Air" has thwacking drums and farty, belching glitch-pops, like Mr. Oizo spiked with laxative, before wooshing keyboards arcs it towards the titular location. Tocotronic's "Pure Vernunft Darf Niemals Siegen (Superpitcher/Wassermann Single Mix)" feels like a Re-Animator lab mistake of Factory-style gothic indie and chugging house. The vocals veer uncomfortably into near-hysteria, backed by jacking drums, spidery chords, "A Forest"-like bass, and a desperately strummed guitar. The MFA's "The Difference It Makes", on the other hand, is as comforting as if the whole track was trapped in a snow globe, a steady pounding beat with a mercury misting of hi-hat, deep bass, and more trancey builds. Then a plaintive voice begins to repeat the title, so tremulous with reverb that it sounds barely human, chopped into doll parts, before it all drops away and a grinding drone chord clears the way for the beat to kick back in.

Disc 2 is less showy, more clubby. Superpitcher's "Tell Me About It" drops deliberate, Arvo Part-esque piano clusters into a mid-tempo groove centered on a steady shaker as a female voice and cymbal rushes snake across the stereo field. Michael Mayer and Mattias Aguayo's "Slow" is actually a mash-up of Kylie's "Slow" (recited by Dieter from "Sprockets") with Mayer's "Lovefood", that's funny for a spin or two but never really gels. SCSI-9's "Mini" is late summer/early fall pressed into grooves, fireflies buzzing in your ears, a deeply dippy bassline, hazy tape loops, and melodies like water tower safety lights blinking on and off.

These are of course the "special" tracks, the ones which have a little something extra (vocals, samples, weirdness) on top of their grooves. Across an expanse of 160 minutes, there are plenty of tracks working a handful of materials into (slightly) new shapes. Dub echo and reverb. Sparkling one-note melody trails. Buzzing analogue basslines. Clicks, pop, plorts, plurps, and burps. Preset strings and j-j-jacking drums. The more amazing thing is that the bulk of this "faceless techno bollocks" is, in complete defiance of most rules about double CD collections, quite good. (But what would a dance record be without a few tracks that confused "repetitious" with "hypnotic.")

2005 has been a healthy, steady year for the label. There have been good-to-great releases from Justus Köhncke, Ferenc, DJ Koze, and Superpitcher, which doesn't even begin to touch on the singles output. (Still the lifeblood of any dance label.) Now, with Total 6

emphatically not sucking, is it safe to say Kompakt is "back"? It seems a bit crude to apply rock journalism tropes and hype mongering to a label whose stated ambition is to prove that minimal techno is a 4-life thing, who will probably be plugging away long after the media has seemingly lost their contact info. Suffice to say they survived their brush with fame and came out tougher, if not quite so lustrous, something all too few labels can boast after being put under those lamps.

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