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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
If Knock Knock is a more conventional album than the more psychedelic and twisted Amygdala, it’s also a more affecting one.
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.
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.
A set that's seamlessly transporting, front to back.
Knock Knock is a visionary blend of minimal techno and armchair psychedelia, jammed with canny features.
The effusive sense of joy that pervades Knock Knock wouldn’t be possible without such a deft hand at the turntables and whoopee cushions.
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.
It's perhaps a tad long and unwieldy, but there's no denying Kozalla's skills as a master collagist here.
This album continually bends and warps, jumps and starts, fully absorbing its antedecents and regurgitating a masterstroke of contemporary electronic music.
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.
Knock Knock is a techno/house gospel, and it’s grandiose in its presentation but intimate enough to exist solely unto you.
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.
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.
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.
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
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
7/10
good
Fav tracks: Moving In A Liquid, Colors of Autumn, Illumination, Pick Up, Scratch That, Baby, Lord Knows, Drone Me Up, Flashy
1 | Club Der Ewigkeiten 4:09 | 81 |
2 | Bonfire 5:25 | 81 |
3 | Moving in a Liquid 4:40 feat. Eddie Fummler | 85 |
4 | Colors of Autumn 4:24 feat. Speech | 78 |
5 | Music on My Teeth 4:16 feat. José González | 77 |
6 | This Is My Rock 3:59 feat. Sophia Kennedy | 80 |
7 | Illumination 4:31 feat. Róisín Murphy | 83 |
8 | Pick Up 6:38 | 94 |
9 | Planet Hase 5:11 feat. Mano Le Tough | 87 |
10 | Scratch That 4:36 feat. Róisín Murphy | 73 |
11 | Muddy Funster 5:24 feat. Kurt Wagner | 77 |
12 | Baby (How Much I LFO You) 4:31 | 80 |
13 | Jesus 5:13 | 80 |
14 | Lord Knows 4:07 | 85 |
15 | Seeing Aliens 4:51 | 92 |
16 | Drone Me Up, Flashy 6:34 feat. Sophia Kennedy | 80 |
#2 | / | Spectrum Culture |
#3 | / | Mixmag |
#3 | / | Pitchfork |
#7 | / | Pretty Much Amazing |
#9 | / | Esquire (US) |
#9 | / | Noisey |
#9 | / | The A.V. Club |
#10 | / | Slant Magazine |
#16 | / | Gaffa (Sweden) |
#17 | / | BrooklynVegan |