DJ Koze - Knock Knock
Critic Score
Based on 23 reviews
2018 Ratings: #55 / 890
Year End Rank: #37
User Score
Based on 432 ratings
2018 Rank: #168
Liked by 19 people
May 4, 2018 / Release Date
LP / Format
Pampa / Label
Deep House / Genre
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CRITIC REVIEWS

91
A.V. Club

The result is compulsively listenable stuff, and Knock Knock may be his best work yet, a sonic snapshot of a day spent in a permanent magic-hour paradise.

90
Tiny Mix Tapes

If his previous full-length was a shade too blue to be a “true” techno album, Knock Knock is Koze’s beating heart of a record with the vitality of a child refusing to sit still.

90
Mixmag
He's arguably produced his near-masterpiece LP.
90
Crack Magazine

There’s a cohesion at play that means Knock Knock feels like the best DJ mixes; these are songs that talk to one another, poly-vocal constructions that prioritise pure pleasure.

90
XLR8R

Knock, Knock is without doubt DJ Koze’s most accessible record, with a sheen that will certainly appeal to listeners outside the dance sphere. It’s also a definitive statement, combining his many influences into something that’s hugely enjoyable and emotionally resonant. Most important of all, it’s still very weird.

90
The Line of Best Fit

It’s this passion for the peculiar that makes this album so bewitching; forcing the listener to return again and again to pick apart its various shades and subtleties.

88
Pitchfork

If Knock Knock is a more conventional album than the more psychedelic and twisted Amygdala, it’s also a more affecting one.

88
Resident Advisor

The genius of Stefan Kozalla is that he can sound euphoric one minute and heartbroken the next. Moods across Knock Knock shift quickly, from melancholy to blissful and back again, sometimes within the same track. The emotional range is remarkable, but that's nothing new for the German artist.

83
Pretty Much Amazing

This is the kind of album you might find yourself less inclined to play all the way through than scroll through the tracklist and queue up songs at will, but there’s enough great music here that you could have a new favorite song every day.

80
Rolling Stone

A set that's seamlessly transporting, front to back.

80
Q Magazine

Knock Knock is a visionary blend of minimal techno and armchair psychedelia, jammed with canny features.

80
Spectrum Culture

The effusive sense of joy that pervades Knock Knock wouldn’t be possible without such a deft hand at the turntables and whoopee cushions.

80
Mojo
The magic of DJ Koze lies in the unique complex musical terroir he's built.
80
The Guardian
It’s a collection of music so eclectic that it could easily sound scattered and messy ... but it holds together, largely as a result of Koze’s evident interest in melody.
80
Loud and Quiet

At its very best, ‘Knock Knock’ will make you fall in love with electronic music all over again. What makes it special is that ‘aha’ moment could be anywhere, depending where Koze hits you the hardest.

80
Exclaim!

It's perhaps a tad long and unwieldy, but there's no denying Kozalla's skills as a master collagist here.

80
The Skinny

This album continually bends and warps, jumps and starts, fully absorbing its antedecents and regurgitating a masterstroke of contemporary electronic music.

80
AllMusic

Like Amygdala, Knock Knock features an abundance of guest vocalists and a wide selection of styles, ranging from lovesick ballads to hypnotic floor-fillers. This time out, he manages to push his sample manipulations further over the edge than before, with shredded, Mouse on Mars-like vocal mutations popping up all over the place, even on some of the album's most dramatic songs, lending to a very strange dynamic.

80
Sputnikmusic

Knock Knock is a techno/house gospel, and it’s grandiose in its presentation but intimate enough to exist solely unto you.

75
The 405

Favouring whirligig aimlessness, knock knock doesn’t repurpose electronic music like Amygdala; but in avoiding “things and sounds,” it never has aspirations otherwise. Pleasure both innocent and decadent is its prerogative.

70
PopMatters
Koze's commitment to avoiding easy four-on-the-floor dance music, his unwillingness to whack at synth pads for an hour and call it an experimental ambient album, is commendable. It aims for the head more than it does the heart, and that's fine. It's an approach that makes it an easy album to appreciate, even if it is tremendously difficult to love.
70
musicOMH

A stylistic chameleon, he flits from style to style in such a way that Knock Knock becomes quite an ambitious body of work, more than the sum of its parts.

65
Under the Radar

The album has its lows (a few songs drift too close to dorm-room-hookah music), but the highs vastly outnumber them. DJ Koze has created another fascinating album out of a world of sounds.

MySoftBulletin
80

hey guys it is alright to enjoy this and AAL

LeftTwix
95

Even after the 5th goddamned listen, DJ Koze's second record still doesn't get old. The tracks I thought were boring filler suddenly become more enjoyable the more I listen to them. 16 tracks of infectious melodies, fantastic guests, and creatives uses of electronic tropes, the best tracks are some of the best music of the decade and the worst tracks are some of the best tracks of the year.

A track like Music On My Teeth is something I normally don't expect to like, as my first listen I was ... read more

Muhammad231299
89

This is a record that can make you dance and chill in the same time, some production works on this thing are amazing and the feature performance are very well executed too

Best Dance Album of the year, hope this Will get some recogniton

DJ Koze is the future for DJ

Gonna listen again i think it's grow on me

PepeSanchez2878
80

scratch that cambio mi vida

Felix_96
70

7/10

good

Fav tracks: Moving In A Liquid, Colors of Autumn, Illumination, Pick Up, Scratch That, Baby, Lord Knows, Drone Me Up, Flashy

slandro2
74

weirdly uplifting and experimental

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Added on: January 25, 2018