12"

genre: HOUSE - DISCO - TECH HOUSE

label: Pampa Records   Cat.No: pampa031

2025 Repress - DJ Koze may be one of the best producers in the world, but he’s foremost a DJ, and it’s his DJ’s ear that calls the shots. Just like in a great set, so it’s been with his releases: Seeing Aliens popped up out of nowhere, a massive, buzzing piece, to announce Koze’s return to the scene and prepare everyone for the forthcoming album, Knock Knock. But now that Koze has your attention, it’s time to remind everyone what’s most important in club music, take a step back, take a left turn, and sink into the groove. So Pick Up: the second single from Knock Knock is 100% pure groove, doubly so on the extended 12 inch version. In one sense it’s incredibly familiar: it’s essentially a filter disco record, very much like something you might imagine emerging from Paris at the turn of the millennium. But of course, this is Koze. Nothing is normal or familiar in his world, and he’s taken this fundamental clubland staple to uncharted territory. By reversing samples from Gladys Knight & the Pips’ “Neither One Of Us (Wants to Be the First to Say Goodbye)” and Melba Moore’s “Pick Me Up, I’ll Dance”, something completely ethereal is created, permeated with emotions the gods must feel: not quite explainable to the human mind, but strong enough to knock you to the floor. In its own way it’s every bit as powerful as “Seeing Aliens”, but it arrives as the proverbial iron fist in a velvet glove.
The flip, a new ten-minute track, “The Love Truck”, is again a great contrast. If “Pick Up” is a soaring flight, “The Love Truck” is a giddy float. Its crisp, snapping percussion is reminiscent of early-2000s minimal techno, but this time, there is absolutely nothing generic to it. The long, drawn-out, intermittent bass, the bird song trills, the pure voices that slip backwards as if from the future… it’s all like the most blissful dream, and it culminates in a coda so subtle yet so beautiful that it’s like every time you’ve seen the sun rise and thought “I wish this would never end,” yet understanding in your deepest heart that the fleeting nature of pleasure is
also what gives it its power. But of course, being made with the ear of a consummate DJ, it’s also full of the excitement of wondering what Koze has in store next. [txt from distribution]