Various Artists – Balance Presents Kolsch (Balance Music)

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Kolsch

Danish electronic producer Rune Reilly Kolsch first emerged way back in 1995 with his drum and bass-tinged debut 12” Zone One, and since then he’s proven to be an extremely prolific artist, with an intimidatingly large backcatalogue of releases as Kolsch, Rune RK and as one half of the duo Artificial Funk alongside his brother. He’s also ended up in an enviable position, one where he’s maintained his links with the underground techno scene (aided by his longterm association with the ultra-credible Kompakt label), yet is also ‘mainstream’ enough to be part of this year’s Stereosonic Festival line-up. A year on from Kolsch’s impressive debut album 1977, this latest mix compilation in Balance’s ongoing series sees him throwing the emphasis upon colourful melodies and rich, lustrous synthetic textures, resulting in a collection that’s equally suited to the dancefloor and late night driving.

From the very outset things pretty much dive straight into deep shimmering synthscapes and crisp, streamlined snares, with the sheeny opulence of Galaxy 2 Galaxy’s ‘Journey Of The Dragons’ being tightly followed by the haunted vocal soul of Pional’s ‘It’s All Over’, before the jittering drum machines of Henrik Schwarz’s ‘Lockstep’ signals a turn into dark, more mechanistic grooves. After Radiohead’s ‘Videotape’ gets expertly weaved into the rolling kickdrums of Dhuman’s ‘No More’, Adrian Hour’s punching ‘Chordgression’ arrives to drag things away from melancholia, ushering in a spectacular peaktime section nice topped off by a segue between the squelchy analogue acid bends and rattling 808s of Kenny Larkin’s ‘Plankton’ and Mano Le Tough’s snare-laden reworking of Caribou’s ‘Can’t Do Without You.’ All up, this is consistently classy stuff.

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A dastardly man with too much music and too little time on his hands

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