Various Artists - Koln Part 1

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  • At the end of 2011, the Cologne-based label ava. had managed three releases. Not bad for an inaugural year. Köln Part 1 is the label's fourth record, and it's another compilation which sees Murat Tepeli and label owner Damiano von Erckert appear alongside one another. You can see why von Erckert chose his buddy's "Reeds Driftin' On By" for the A1 slot. Exuberant and groovy, it's likely to catch the attention of every DJ who slides the disc onto the platter at their local record store. More than that, it's efficient, employing a simplistic 303 bass twang to drive the floor. It's the second half, however, which will inspire extreme love or hate, owing to a sprightly motif that loops rapidly into place. Possessed with a definite non-Western feel, its timbre is somewhere between a piano accordion and an Arabian flute. In a word: polarising. The Andy Vaz cut, "Only," is less adventurous, tying meek beats to mildy euphoric electric piano. Not much else to say about it really. It'll get the floor moving and the cute "I'm only!" vocal sample will plague a few earworm-prone brains the next morning perhaps. "Damiano von ER" is reminiscent of tobias.' Leaning Over Backwards album, in that it employs relatively mundane sounds but manages to spin them into something rather polished and memorable. Leading off with a slushy cymbal, von Erckert layers in ultra-plush bass and a dulled, alarm clock-like pulsing. The latter is just a single note repeated for several bars and occasionally changing pitch, but it somehow works, despite the scarcity of other melodic elements. Last, Martin Beume's "Hey Bobby" places a great deal of emphasis on spoken word samples. Maybe a bit too much. Either side of the beatless passages about inter-planetary travel, an abrasive tech house shuffle and lukewarm chords push things forward, but inevitably the spoken sections seem to stifle the track's momentum. Even so, like all the tracks on Köln Part 1, "Hey Bobby" shows that there's still plenty of room left for creativity within house music.
  • Tracklist
      A1 Murat Tepeli - Reeds Driftin On By A2 Andy Vaz - Only B1 Damiano von Erckert - Damiano von Er B2 Martin Beume - Hey Bobby
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