16.5.2011 von mk.

The most eagerly anticipated dance album release of the year is finally here! After last year’s game-changing ‘Record of the Year’ anthem (RA/Groove/Mixmag) ‘Without You’, Art Department release their debut album and it’s truly amazing!
The haunting, yet lucid and melancholic house of Art Department is reminiscent of early Chicago house through a 21st century paradigm. The music is emotive and beguiling, whilst being something truly original and inspirational. The album features collaborations with Osunlade, Seth Troxler and Soul Clap who all contribute to make the album the colourful tapestry it is. While they visibly pay homage to generational influences, from early Chicago house classics to quintessential hip-hop and Disco, they manage to create a truly unique formula for themselves.

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5.5.2011 von mk.

The Eleven is - numerologically speaking- definitely not a lucky number in the Western culture. It exceeds perfection just by one and thus represents the number of excess and sin in Christian mythology; that’s why apocalyptic events always start in the eleventh hour. However, those who followed the output of the most successful German label for electronic dance music since 2000 to date are aware of the fact that Cocoon’s aim is rather the further development of sound instead of sticking to nostalgia, or portentous “Omen”. Against this background, it may be a temporal coincidence but also totally logical that, on the occasion of the eleventh anniversary, this compilation breaks with traditions which people have come to like. So, the focus of CD 1 does not lie in celebrating only the “best of” tracks, but rather in nine tracks from the past six years which have, without doubt, made some impact on clubs and dancefloors worldwide, but whose stories have not been musically “told” so far. It all begins with Chile-born Alejandra Iglesias aka Dinky, whose “Acid In My Fridge” from the Cocoon Compilation D in 2004 has ultimately taken her into the top league of producers. Lee Curtiss, Ryan Crosson, Seth Troxler and Shaun Reeves - the Michigan collective Visionquest - turns the musical masterpiece into a marvel of fragmented Dub Techno in a Breakbeat disguise, where the 303 takes over the controls again in the end anyway. Subsequently, Toronto’s SCI + TEC ambassador Carlo Lio is pumping a maximum of distortion in Dubfire/Huntemann’s “Diablo”, while Amsterdam’s Detroit resident Steve Rachmad brilliantly purges Joel Mull’s club hit “Harmonautic String” of 2007, and the Scottish “Consumed” producer Gary Beck unfolds presumably the mightiest bass on this CD. Actually, there are still many things to say about each title on this CD, showing such great coalitions of Guy Gerber and Kollektiv Turmstraße, Roman Flügel and Martin Buttrich, Tim Green and Argy resp. Paul Ritch and 2000.

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