- Triple R, aka Riley Reinhold, steps up to deliver the fifth instalment of his mix series, which blends gems from Trapez’s recent past with previously unheard delights from its near future. Whether or not you enjoy this CD will depend largely on whether you enjoy the Trapez sound in general: too skittish and insubstantial for some, for others it represents minimal house and techno at its innovative, energetic best. As minimal’s star has risen, so too has that of Trapez and its producers. Some of the label’s core artists, like Jeff Samuel or Oliver Hacke, have emerged from relative obscurity to real prominence in the contemporary techno firmament: arguably, their music has changed little in the last four or five years, but global clubbers’ tastes have, and as such these producers find themselves and their music in relatively high demand.
The compilation kicks off with Reinhold’s own ‘Point Zero’ a pulsing, moody scene-setter, before dropping into Dominik Eulberg’s superlative re-rub of Shane Berry’s ‘Fillertet 2’. In its original form, ‘Fillertet 2’ was a rave monster; in Eulberg’s busy hands it takes on even more epic, contorted proportions. Trapez is all about enervated glitch and blip stretched and squeezed into tight, insidiously funky shapes, and offerings from Eyer & Atto, 3 Channels and Rico Pustel fit this blueprint perfectly - when really you wish they would explode or reinvent it. One of 2007’s biggest success stories, Gabriel Ananda, offers up his remix of Marek Bois’s ‘You Got Good Ash’, a tightly-coiled, moody clicker that’s been a big hit with DJs in recent months. It’s one of the only tracks on this compilation taken from outside the immediate Trapez family, and it shows: the warm, trippy keys which Ananda brings to the fore form just the kind of hook which the other tracks frequently hint at but can’t or won’t quite deliver - all too often, the tracks which comprise this compilation sound aimless, their minimalism masking a lack of depth or progression.
Triple R’s fast-cutting approach to mixing (there are 20 tracks on here) is clearly intended to keep things interesting, but it has precisely the opposite effect – with each component track given very little room to breathe, the bombardment of vaguely appealing percussive sounds becomes wearing, even a little nihilistic. Tellingly, the stand-out tracks are the two bizarre takes on ‘pop’: dressing their slick rhythms with off-kilter vocals, Und’s ‘Fox in the Box’ and Noze’s ‘Kitchen’ burrow into a consciousness basically unbothered by the rest of the album’s cuts.
Still, it’s important to note that a great number of the individual tracks cherry-picked by Reinhold (Andrea Ferlin’s Mobilee-esque ‘Clear’ is terrific, and the likes of Swat Squad, Audio Werner and SLG are all on fine form) will rock floors if well-deployed. Trapez 12”s are, after all, an essential weapon in any minimal DJ’s arsenal. As a DJ, though, you wouldn’t play one after the other after the other after the other – and this compilation represents the reason why.
Tracklist1 Riley Reinhold - Point Zero
2 Shane Berry - Fillertet 2 (Dominik Eulberg Rmx)
3 Rico Püstel - Chief Redden
4 Eyerer* & Atto - Supersnack
5 Marek Bois - You Got Good Ash (Gabriel Ananda Rmx)
6 SLG - Rushhour
7 Luke Le Mans - The Docks
8 3 Channels - Amnesia
9 Jeff Samuel - Gonadodropin
10 Sandiego - Rogoredo
11 Florian Meindl - Tamiflop 2
12 Alex Under - El Danubio Universal
13 Swat-Squad - Escoria (Audio Werner Rmx)
14 Mark-Henning - Pokerbot
15 Andrea Ferlin - Clear
16 Nôze - Kitchen
17 Und - Fox In The Box
18 Renato Figoli - La Stelle Sono Tante
19 Toro - Geht Auf Zwei
20 Eyerer & Atto - Supersnack (Oliver Hacke Rmx)