Kompakt 250 Very... Techno Roses from Kompakt Records

•    Released // October 22, 2012                                         Released // October 22, 2012
  •       Format // 2xLP+CD                                                      Format // CD 
  • Catalog Nr // Kompakt 250                                           Catalog Nr // Kompakt CD 100
  •          EAN // 880319072239                                                 EAN // 880319072024

  *** COMES ON 180G VINYL *** It's been eight years since MICHAEL MAYER released his debut album "Touch", but one certainly couldn't consider him lazy, what with a tightly packed schedule of DJ gigs and umpteen remixes. All the more reason that Kompakt is pleased to announce the sophomore album MANTASY, a long-awaited, indispensable update of Michael Mayer's production sound and an essential release for the label in 2012. One tends to think that it's relatively easy: you make some sounds, you launch a label, you release some records… ultimately, electronic music is known for its short chain of command. Accordingly, "Touch" was created in just a few weeks, "and frankly, you can hear that", says Michael Mayer: "MANTASY is my second solo album, but for me it's really the first one". Indeed, the masterful sequencing and high production value bear witness to an artist in full control of his medium. You may think of the release as a "DJ album", not so much describing an album for DJs, but rather one from a DJ: "I really can't hide that", explains the musician, "MANTASY clearly reflects the gazillions of sounds I'm listening to in private, especially my love for soundtracks or soundtrack-like music." The album's title refers to the escapist momentum of a cinematic journey into the unknown, a tribute to history's great explorers, "to characters obsessed with an idea, to totally wrong conceptions of the world and faulty sea charts, to inconceivable exertions, all that lunacy", but also an intimate trip to the core of the Kompakt sound itself, whose main ambassador has always been Michael Mayer. Fittingly, the voyage starts with the panoramic "Sully", a flawless ambient study that opens the gateway to the world of MANTASY, which – hardly definable, but always palpable – relates to a romantic spirit of adventure, curiosity and nostalgia, yet far less concerned with the past than with the future. A case in point is "Lamusetwa", a track where memories and dreams collide in a most satisfying manner: "That's the name of one of my earliest favourite songs, which I can sing to this day, but never found again", says Mayer, "actually it's called ‚L'amour, c'est toi', but when you're 2 or 3 years old, you just sing ‚Lamusetwa' without understanding the words". The minimal funk of "Wrong Lap" and the Italo Disco reminiscences of title track "Mantasy" follow suit: the dance machine is fired up, the sky rips open, epic synthesizers roam the landscape driven by precision beats and hypodermic basslines lure the inner cinema back onto the floor. Then "Roses" finds its broken glamour in the dusk of the club, sporting a gloomy beauty only reinforced by the well-lit detour into "Baumhaus". "Rudi Was A Punk" tightens things up and rides the airwaves with a lead foot, followed by "Voigt Kampff Test", a Science Fiction thriller disguised as a dance track, and then an adrenalin-fuelled "Neue Furche" ("New Groove") transfers both the name and the sound of Nu Groove, one of Michael Mayer's all-time favourite labels, into a new idiom. Eventually, MANTASY's last track "Good Times" waltzes in, sung by WHOMADEWHO's man of a thousand voices Jeppe Kjellberg. It's an ode to nightlife utopia, to hands thrown in the air and the feeling of belonging, when you know that this is the place, the sound, the crowd you want to be with. "Movies without a happy end are dumb", clarifies Mayer, "so switch off your smartphones and get on board!"

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Review:
The follow up to 2004's Touch sees Kompakt boss Michael Mayer embrace a wide range of styles without losing his melodic touch. Yet despite this, Mayer's fondness for irresistible hooks and melodies is audible on the ambient opener "Sully", and "Lamusetwa", whose chopped up break beats combine sensuous strings and spy theme synths. Elsewhere though, Mayer tries his hand at new wave - on the storming rhythms of "Rudi was a Punk" - and visceral club techno - "Neue Furche". However, his pop techno past can't escape him as the infectious "Good Times", which features the vocal "let's just have a good time", demonstrates.