It’s almost surprising that DJ Koze is only now, decades into his career, releasing an album titled Music Can Hear Us. The Hamburg-based producer has long advocated for the idea that music is a living, breathing organism: his dance tracks may be able to whip 70,000-strong crowds into a frenzy, but they’re also oozy, globular things that seem to absorb the influence of anything they come into contact with. Koze is tricksy with the press – often making up stories about himself then debunking them years later – but his music is as good a form of memoir than any, each new album documenting his gradual transition from psychedelic oddball to pensive, party-starting nostalgist.
Music Can Hear Us picks up roughly where 2018’s now-classic Knock Knock left off: for the most part, it’s warm and mellow, an album of hazy electropop songs interspersed with thumping house and techno tracks. It feels a little like walking around a city on the Sunday before a bank holiday, stopping at any bar or club you spy on your travels, thanks in part to Koze’s deft incorporation of various global dance styles. Die Gondel, with longtime collaborator Sophia Kennedy, layers discombobulated baile funk atop what sounds like a sample of south Asian film music; the Damon Albarn collaboration Pure Love runs Albarn’s iconic voice through Auto-Tune and pairs it with hypnotic amapiano, while Brushcutter presents a harsh, 90s take on drum’n’bass. All of this is filtered through Koze’s warm lens, and if it doesn’t feel quite as refined as Knock Knock – undoubtedly his most pristinely packaged record to date, with none of Music Can Hear Us’s shagginess – it’s still the kind of journey that only Koze can really take us on.
