The annual samplers from Kompakt have done their job. Time and again I’ve been intrigued by Wolfgang Voigt’s contributions to the Total and Pop Ambient compilations enough to seek out an entire album of his works. Brothers Voigt, Reinhard and Wolfgang keep the Kompakt spirit afloat with an inviting form of electronic music that doesn’t try to mess with your inner-rhythms nor beat you over the head with arcane practices. It’s techno without the mindless beats, electronica without the hyper sampling, abstraction without the distance.
These brothers excel at placing things between beats, the sweet spot for those who want to dive below the surface of what beat-driven electronic music can offer. If “Intro König” doesn’t convince you of this, then you’re sadly missing out. However, the enthusiastic listener can’t get discouraged by the untitled 11th track, a 26-minute one-bar drone set to loop where even the most theoretically correct harmonic structure comes off as incompetently dissonant. No one said the Voigt brothers would provide smooth sailing — or a meager payoff, for that matter. If you just surrender, you’ll be beyond content.