In his recent review of Koze Presents Pampa Vol. 1, the first compilation from DJ Koze and Marcus Fink's Pampa Records, Jonah Bromwich describes the label in terms of "humor, warmth, and the pleasure of small surprises." Those aren't qualities you often find attached to electronic music, at least not all together, but they're at the heart of what makes Pampa special.
Hamburg's DJ Koze, a onetime hip-hop DJ and an affiliate of Cologne's brainy yet hard-raving Kompakt crew, is himself a bundle of contradictions, with an early discography that includes gnarly head-banging techno and, with his former group International Pony, zany electro-pop. Since co-founding Pampa in 2009, though, he's tempered his wilder instincts and developed a unique sound that's both squirrelly and sensitive, wedding oddball sound design to dewy-eyed deep house. And those tendencies have set the tone for Pampa itself, as the label has grown to encompass everything from haywire modular-synth Christmas carols, to albums from Isolée, Ada, Robag Wruhme, and even the Postal Service member Dntel. Here are 10 standouts from a catalog that's impossible to pin down.
Axel Boman – "Purple Drank"
It's not hard to see why the Swedish electronic musician Axel Boman had codeine on the brain when he was thinking up a title for his first big hit for Pampa. Everything about this early-morning deep house anthem is sluggish and slurry, from the pitched-down refrain ("I woke up with your name on my lips") to the woozy organs to the toe-scuffing groove. It sounds like it's being played back at -8 even at its normal speed, which makes it the richest sort of manna for clubbers in search of a vibe at once murkily narcotic and subtly euphoric.
Die Vögel – "The Chicken"
The German duo Die Vögel aren't the first artists to sample Werner Herzog; cLOUDEAD slipped a snippet of the German auteur's inimitable speech into their 2004 song "Dead Dogs Two," in which a childlike refrain gives way to jungle birdsong and Herzog's dour meditations on "the harmony of overwhelming and collective murder." But Die Vögel's muddle-headed minimal-house jam takes a different route, availing itself of Herzog's copious sense of humor and sampling this wonderfully deadpan monologue on the stupidity of chickens. "Try to look a chicken in the eye with great intensity" might be the most absurd spoken-word refrain ever to grace a house track—which is precisely what makes it so perfect for Pampa, a label that's not afraid to give in to its more gonzo impulses from time to time.
Jamie xx & Kosi Kos – "Come We Go"
DJ Koze is a wildly prolific remixer—so far he has not one but two full-length remix collections to his name—but, for whatever reason, he doesn't often turn up working side-by-side with other musicians. Leave it to Jamie xx, who has previously co-produced tracks with Four Tet and John Talabot, to coax the restless Mr. Kozalla (working here under his Kosi Kos alias) into sitting still for a moment. The product of their meeting is the rarest kind of collaboration, one that doesn't really sound like either artist's work, though both their respective fingerprints are visible if you squint. The nod to classic funk and soul (just check that Cymande-like guitar trill lighting up the opening bars like a pinball machine) seems likely to be Jamie xx's work, and so does the pinging analog synth sequence that carries the tune toward its denouement. Koze's signature is harder to spot, but I suspect it's there in the slightly manic vocal samples—the nonstop jumble of babys and come ons and ooos—that spin like a drunken suitor doing rounds on the Tilt-a-Whirl. The whole thing is both antic and tightly controlled at once—a suggestion that its odd-couple parents make the perfect balancing act.
Herbert – "It's Only (DJ Koze Remix)"
Koze's irrepressible sense of humor flares up in the form of a weird, kazoo-like melody that crops up a few seconds past the four-minute mark, and I suspect that the gurgling, corporeal sound may be his tribute to the theme of Herbert's 2001 album Bodily Functions, which was constructed from samples of the human body. Class clown Koze, after all, is just the kind of guy who would giggle at the sound of a rumbling tummy. But this isn't a funny track—it's the heaviest, most dejected thing Koze has ever put his name to, with Dani Siciliano's drowsy vocals sailing across a synth melody as black and viscous as the River Styx. At the same time, the song shows off some of Koze's most creative sound design: Inch through the darkness of this achingly empty song, and you're confronted with a wealth of surprising little details—scratchy little rhythms, airy flute, weird trills, breaths, sighs, hiccups—glistening in its nooks and crannies.
Ricoshei – "Perfect Like You"
This ode to Sehnsucht, Saudade, or whatever you'd like to call this specific kind of longing in English is about this close from total mushiness, and the "touch"/"much" rhyme scheme tips it that much closer to the edge. But you know what? Who cares! Balanced between dejection and hope, this song from Los Angeles' Ricoshëi about as perfect as tearjerkers get.
DJ Koze – "XTC"
Drug songs are boring. So boring. But, despite the title, this 2015 single isn't your typical nudge-nudge-wink-wink drug song. Despite its air of bottomless bliss, it's not even your typically earnest, evangelizing drug song. "Many people are experimenting with the drug ecstasy," says an unidentified woman, slowly, her voice pitched down almost imperceptibly. (The text apparently comes from a letter sent to Osho, the guru Bhagwan Shri Rajneesh, by one of his followers.)
She continues: "I heard you say once that a lie is sweet in the beginning and bitter in the end, and truth is bitter in the beginning, and sweet in the end. I have been meditating, but I don't have the experiences people report from the drug ecstasy. Is the drug like the lie, and meditation the truth? Or am I missing something that could really help me?"
Slow and steady, the song is like an IV drip of conflicting emotions. Its deep, sensuous reverie is tempered by sorrow, yearning, doubt—even a little absent-minded humor, in the form of some totally inappropriate cowbell patterns that are silenced almost as quickly as they begin. Koze lets the vocal sample play out in its entirety, returns to the business of getting deep, and then plays out the whole, long speech once again, for good measure, as though even he hadn't made up his mind about it all.
Axel Boman – "1979"
The title reads like the caption on a dog-eared snapshot, but Axel Boman's "1979" feels more like the musical equivalent of a still life. Very little actually happens over the course of its nearly 11-minute run: A loping conga groove stretches from end to end; a tightly looped chord throws off a muted tungsten glow. Despite the steady rhythm, there's almost no forward motion to it—particularly given the way he breaks it all down, halfway through, and painstakingly builds it back up again. The bassline comes and goes; listening to the song is as much about the memory of something that's gone silent as it is paying attention to what's there. It's as meditative as house music gets.
Ada – "Faith"
Ada has a special gift for covers; although she got her start crafting bright, blippy, slightly lo-fi techno, it was with her cover of Yeah Yeah Yeahs' "Maps" that the Cologne electronic musician first made her name. If "Maps" seemed like an unexpected choice at the time, it pales in comparison to her decision to tackle "Faith"—not the Cure song, nor even George Michael's, but the Luscious Jackson one. Subtracting the rock and blues elements from the original, Ada's version distills the song down to soft vocal harmonies and echoing guitars. It's a gorgeous, unassuming song, and the perfect opening to an album, 2011's Meine Zarten Pfoten, that represents Pampa at its most sentimental.
Robag Wruhme – "Tulpa Ovi"
For a certain kind of deep-house dreamer, Matthew Herbert's 2001 album Bodily Functionsremains the high-water mark for dance-floor melancholy. It's a good bet that Jena, Germany's Robag Wruhme counts himself among that album's most fervent fans: This cut from his 2011 album Thora Vukk could almost be mistaken for an outtake from Herbert's magnum opus. It moves with the same nervous flutter, like a heart about to burst, and its piano melody is just as potent. In place of a singer like Dani Siciliano, whose singing gave Bodily Functions its emotional punch, Wruhme avails himself of a strange call-and-response between a grown-up and a roomful of children, which lends the song a hint of the built-in nostalgia of the Langley Schools Music Project.
Isolée – "Floripa"
It's ironic that Isolée's name will forever be connected to a song as ebullient and outgoing as "Beau Mot Plage," if only because the majority of his work is anything but. For the most part, he tends to play his cards close to his chest; what makes an Isolée tune special isn't the melody or even the groove, but the subtle, and often quirky, treatments he applies to his sounds. "Floripa," from 2015, is a great example of the way his music rewards introspection. Its simple, ascending-and-descending melody is just a foil for everything else happening just beneath the surface. You may come for the petals, but it's the brambles that keep you sticking around. The same could be said for Pampa itself.