Win tickets to Heineken Expressions in Tripod tonight

Heineken Expression Dublin kicks off in Tripod at 8pm tonigh with In Flagranti, The Field, Sarsparilla, Donal Dineen and The Juan MacLean (DJ Set) all providing quality music. Visuals on the night come from TADO, Serge Seidlitz, Phil Dunne, Steve Simpson, Chris Judge, Gaetan Billault, BRENB and danleo. (You might remember Phil Dunne from the excellent Animal Collective illustration he did for Analogue at the beginning of the year.)

The event is free and you can register for tickets here. Heineken also gave Analogue 2 pairs of ticket to giveaway, so to avoid the hassle of registering and printing out tickets. The first two people to mail info at analoguemagazine.com with Heineken Expressions in the subject line will have to their names on the guestlist plus one for tonight. Winners announced by 5pm.

Kompakt

Hear that sound? That is the sound of the global music business groaning, splintering, falling apart and sinking like the Titanic in slow motion. Ever since Thom Yorke smugly jumped ship and escaped on a little lifeboat called ‘In Rainbows’, the world’s eyes have been trained on this hulking industry as it slowly goes tits up in a freezing ocean of illegally downloaded MP3 files. Many see the current state of the industry as the death knell for record label. Some see this as a good thing. Yer Trents and yer Thoms will happily jig (or do a jittery Ian Curtis-esque jig movement in Thom’s case) on the graves of record labels, as Music Industry 2.0 welcomes us into a brave new world.

While many will not mourn the potential loss of the so called big four (Universal, Sony BMG, Warner, and EMI), surely some flowers (gladioli perhaps?) will be kept to mark the final resting places of the more revered smaller labels? Before we all throw in the towel, however, and start awarding posthumous accolades, Analogue would like to direct some attention to the more groundbreaking record labels of our time. Believe it or not, there was a time when record labels (not blogs) played the part of your musically aware older sibling. When I was 16, it didn’t matter a jot what sort of tune I heard but as long as it was on Creation, I was bound to love it. Creation shaped my teenage music years and I thank them for it. For people older than me, it was possibly Rough Trade. For my American counterparts, it was likely Sub Pop or Matador. In short, good smaller record labels have personality and passion.

‘Label Love’ will focus in depth on a different label every month. The structure might vary, but the general idea is to highlight an influential record label, try to explain what makes them special and consider some key releases. In a ruthless game of spin the bottle in Analogue towers, I ended up marked for this first feature. While I am sure many future featured labels will be guitar based, I am going to choose the music label I listen to most right now, a German based techno distributor called Kompakt. Hey, you at the back, stop rolling your eyes and give 4/4 techno a chance. Now, a little back story on Kompakt and a few releases that best represent the full range of its sound.

A Short History of Kompakt
Kompakt began with three German DJs (Michael Mayer, Jurgen Paape and Wolfgang Voigt), who worked together (and still do) in a big house in Cologne with a record shop attached. All three look alike and are vegetarians. Sounds like a scary techno cult right? Kompakt is often lazily described as a minimal techno label. While there is no shortage of acts representing that sub-genre on Kompakt, such pigeon holing does little justice to the more diverse releases and the full range of the label’s sound. In truth, Kompakt is home to a remarkably broad range of tastes, running from the strange swinging time signatures of the sound called ‘schaffel’, to the near beatless, ambient washes of the ‘Pop Ambient’ series. Also, the main seam of 4/4 techno the label mines, traverses a long continuum from the playful, campy pop sound of Justus Kohncke to the gothic dramatics of much of Superpitcher’s output. Indeed, the only real thread that ties such varied wonders together is the sheer consistency and quality of the label’s output; a demonstration of its owners’ imagination, impeccable tastes, and never-ending endeavours to push the boundaries of what is possible within techno music. While some will argue that the label’s glories are a thing of the past, recent releases such as Gui Boratto’s ‘Chromophobia’ and The Field’s ‘From here we go Sublime’ show that Kompakt’s heart still beats strong.

Some Key Releases on Kompakt:

The Mix CD

Immer: Michael Mayer

For any influential DJ, the most challenging demonstration of your musical dexterity is how you mix a set. For your average Berlin deck monkey, a DJ set will last between 4 and 6 hours, allowing all sorts of breathing space for strange and wonderful build-ups and detours. However, cramming that experience into a one hour mix CD is another thing altogether. Kompakt founder Michael Mayer managed this twice; spectacularly. The big fish that got away from the label was his exemplary, revered and upbeat Fabric 13 mix. But ‘Immer’, his first true mix for Kompakt is a monolithic example of the DJ mix as an artform. The whole of ‘Immer’ is greater than the parts. Mayer selects and precisely mixes a series of pieces that mesh together seamlessly, which, while married to the ubiquitous 4/4 beat, progress through a fully realised journey. In contrast to the circular, druggy abstraction of Ricardo Vilallobos, Mayer likes narrative. Many Kompakt mixes feel like mangled pop albums. They have a beginning, middle and end. ‘Immer’ is the ultimate example of this.

The Sampler

Total 3: Various Artists

Every Summer Kompakt announce the arrival of the latest sampler from their ‘Total’ series with a huge party in Cologne. While the quality of the Total series has been somewhat erratic in recent years, the early compilations from the label’s hey-day contain an embarrassment of riches. ‘Total 3’ stands out in particular, and with tracks like Superpitcher’s brooding ‘Tomorrow’, Michael Mayer’s playful ‘Hush Hush Baby’ and Reinhard Voigt’s thumping, spare ‘In aller Freundschaft’ it plays like a who’s who of techno’s most innovative producers at the mid-point of the decade.

The Box Set

Nah und Fern: Gas

‘Nah und Fern’ is the brainchild of Wolfgang Voigt and is a re-released compilation of four near mythical albums of ambient minimal techno, sampled mostly from German classical records, and inspired by the depths of the Black Forest. The vapourous music made by Gas is difficult to convey in prose. It’s techno in the barest sense, in that you will often hear 4/4 beats, sometimes close, and sometimes further away in the thick mix. They beat dully like signals through thick fog, either anchoring you or tricking you into following them ever deeper into Voigt’s strange, sometimes scary but always beautiful sonic terrain. Essential.

The Full-Length

From Here we go Sublime: The Field

Like many dance labels, Kompakt butters its bread from the vinyl singles it distributes from its Cologne HQ. Techno is often about that one, blinding shit-hot track a DJ drops at the right moment. Tunes exist in isolation, waiting to be threaded into someone else’s mix. In short, it is an environment where the concept of the album as an artistic statement carries a lot less clout than it does in traditional indie or chart rock. Last year, this trend was bucked spectacularly by Swede Alex Willner (AKA The Field), whose full-length from ‘here we go sublime’ is, well, sublime from start to finish. Glacial, expansive, and exquisite, the album garnered rave (geddit?) reviews on its release and is something of a modern electronic classic.