Alexander Kowalski – Response

A few years back during covid times, Sascha Dive came along with some home made mixes i believe. The shivers I got when those strings came in from scarpia were unheard. After some time I gave up the search, and forgot about it.

Now, almost 4 years later. It just showed up somewhere, somehow. What an incredible record. You never know, it might be around the corner!

EDIT: a few months later I get why this works so well: it has disco song melody with a warehouse techno production. "Lightning Field" has the samples and the bassline melody of a french house tune, but it stomps with Detroitish techno.

Top of the game of all those German melodic dub techno albums that took so much inspiration from Detroit. The production here is way more echoy than usual, in the same fashion as other Kanzleramt artists at the time, but Kowalski in particular fetched a specific mood (already promised in his previous releases, mostly "All I got to know") with syth pads stomped by warehouse percussion, and ran with it in what is still his best work and one of the better techno albums out there. "Days of the Liar", "Belo Horizonte", "Lightning Field" etc are very similar but also uniquely his.

When people speak of lush, gorgeous electronic music, a lot of disparate ideas and styles cross your mind. The deep sexy house of Kevin Yost, the lush smoothness of a old Sasha set or the jazzy instrumentation of Truby Trio might make an appearance, but it isn’t often you would hear those adjectives and Techno thrown about in the same description. Enter Alexander Kowalski and his brand new album Response, to muddy the waters that much more. Describing this as a collection of dancefloor ready jams that will prove to be equally effectively in your living room or car, might confuse you. But you owe it to yourself to give this a proper listen and let the music take you and your mind on a journey. The TOP album of 2003.