Music Can Hear Us
There has always been something deeply old-fashioned about DJ Koze’s music, a sense of wonder and invention more closely related to the rush of a Bugs Bunny cartoon or the moony romance of a prewar pop song than anything from the modern era per se. *Music Can Hear Us* is only his fourth album in 20 years—DJ work keeps him busy, and in general he does not seem like one to hurry—and builds on the pan-electronic style he developed on *Amygdala* and *Knock Knock*. The songs shuffle between tropical pop (the Damon Albarn-featuring “Pure Love”), melancholy ambience (“A Dónde Vas?”), lightly psychedelic club tracks (“Aruna,” “Buschtaxi”), and doo-wop sweetness (“Unbelievable,” “Umaoi”) with a fluidity that can feel both playful and dizzying. Music for tickling your third eye.
Playfully swerving through house, Afrobeats, and wistful German-language pop, Stefan Kozalla’s latest album makes good on his inextinguishable supply of curiosity and childlike wonder.
Listening to DJ Koze's Music Can Hear Us is like stepping into a kooky sonic funhouse — playfully warped, pleasantly disorienting, and strangely familiar.
Appealingly rough around the edges, the Hamburg DJ’s fourth album voyages from a Damon Albarn amapiano track to harsh 90s drum’n’bass