Stefan Kozalla comes from Hamburg, so maybe that explains his distance from the middle-aged-man-funk of the rest of Kompakt's Cologne-based output. He also got his start as a hip-hop DJ, which explains his DJ sets, full of hard edits, scratching, and ghetto-tech odes to popping that pussy alongside the standard issue melodic tech-house. His 2004 mix All People is My Friends opened with the Langley Schools Music Project before getting down to "business" with Farben and Mathew Jonson. As Adolf Noise, he's recorded everything from grating punk-techno to a drunken seaside cover of "We Are the World" with himself doing all the voices. As one-third of International Pony he's made two discs of post-Daft Punk pop dance, one released on a major label.
Which is why the relatively straight melodic house and techno of Kosi Comes Around is such a pleasant surprise. It's a rather risky gambit, considering he's built most of his rep so far on stepping outside genre conventions. "Don't Feed the Cat" jacks along on little more than its own percussive momentum, reminding us that for all the home listening rhetoric that rightly gets thrown around with dance music CDs, its power is still rooted in the rhythmic. "The Geklöppel Continues" blurs the line between harmonic and rhythmic entirely, as the melody is hammered with such force that it becomes part of the beat. "My Grandmotha" is a bit like a house music Boards of Canada, with tiny melodic chunks swirling wistfully. "Estrella" likewise plonks itself squarely in the Kompakt tradition of chugging, dewy melancholy.
The album climaxes with the strange 2003 anthem "Brutalga Square", a trawl through a dark, dank German sewer full of bass, lots of negative space, and strange, rattling offbeats. This is still Koze's most famous track, nearly 10 minutes of ridiculously tense brooding with no release. After the pleasing, warm music of most of Kosi Comes Around, this plunge into the underworld is disorienting, like suddenly being stranded in a long, dark tunnel. The very bright light at the end comes with "Chiminea", a sweetly lilting comedown that floats us out to sea. The Hamburglar himself winks at us as his balloon sails over the sunset, pleased as punch that there's still life left in a twenty year old genre. While I appreciate all his half-soldered bedroom experiments and flashy way with a crossfader, I'm pretty pleased with the results.
