It’s 1993, and in the city of Cologne – a good 573 km from Berlin, Germany’s main protagonist in its self-mythologising post-unification dance history – buddies Wolfgang Voigt, Jörg Burger, Jurgen Paape and Ingmar Koch open a record shop called Delirium. A customer and DJ, Michael Mayer, buys in to the project, and becomes a crucial addition, not least because he gets the shop in order by actually ordering stock. Their musical micro-climate is inspired by pop, particularly British synth pop from northern industrial towns, Germany’s burgeoning techno takeover and acid house, and by 1998 the enterprise is releasing records. Somewhere between changing their name to Kompakt and getting an in-house chef, that little German eagle logo (based on Cologne’s city shield, and created by designer Bianca Strauch) comes to define a sound. This is true both on a local level – the Cologne sound – and more generally, in techno.How? A naif, and not entirely faux one at that, approach to the prescriptive parameters of techno saw them unflinchingly advocate pop, trance and ambient under the Kompakt banner. Their early releases set a trend for a chunky minimal sound that was seemingly everywhere seven years later, while they broadened and consolidated luxuriant micro texture, a precise, economical sonics, and a touchy-feely melancholia (a prickle of bittersweet euphoria creeping up your spine and exploding into your brain like ticker tape). They did this so well that the label’s name has hardened into journalistic shorthand for anything mildly emotive and 4/4. Now if any poor sod dares to layer minor chords over a kick drum they’ll be lumbered with the epithet “Kompakt-esque”. Even more virulent is the way it’s become fashionable for bands to namedrop the label in order to chirpse the club contingent, all doe-eyed and sincere. Friendly Fires, we’re looking at you.As part of their birthday celebrations they’re taking a pop-up shop on the road throughout Europe, with a week long residence at Ableton’s HQ in Berlin’s Prenzlauer Berg until September 7th . As celebrations go, it’s all very well, but we thought it only right to pay our own tribute with a history of Kompakt in eight releases.Jürgen Paape - "Triumph" (1998)
Annons