- Slow and steady wins the race, as always with DJ Koze.
- Every time DJ Koze comes out of the woodwork to drop a 12-inch—or even just a remix—we usually end up hearing it everywhere for months on end. His latest, "Wespennest," is no outlier. The first taste of the German producer's upcoming 2024 LP is as wistful and anthemic as ever, but also looser and jammier.
At a healthy eight minutes long, "Wespennest" takes its time to get going, establishing a hypnotic tech house groove before Sophia Kennedy starts breathily intoning about wasps. And while her vocal is arguably the centrepiece, it's the first time those glowing synth tones come in, somewhere between a harpsichord and an organ, that'll probably cause the most havoc. In classic Koze fashion, it's an absolute belter disguised as melancholy, with lyrics about a wasp's nest lurking in the natural beauty of a pastoral scene, complete with an infuriating but trippy wasp buzzing around the stereo spectrum towards the end. It's the kind of thing you'd hear in festival montages of people swaying in the sunset, even though it hardly ever goes beyond a murmur for its eight minutes.
The B-side, "Candidasa," is longer, and was reportedly made in something of an extended stupor during a hazy vacation in Indonesia. Where "Wespennest" is warm and inviting, "Candidasa" is cold and clammy, with tuned percussion sounds, rattling melodies and a nylon guitar creating more of a focus on textural interplay than melody. It's still DJ Koze, though, so there are plenty of wacky sounds, snippets of vocal and other aural treats. It steadily builds towards a climax—imagine Koze auditioning for Innervisions. Both tracks are unabashedly clubby and stripped-back by Koze standards, and what they might lack in the instant gratification of a track like "Pick Up" they make up for in a tenacious, lingering insistence. In other words, it's DJ Koze wizardry at its best.
Tracklist01. Wespennest feat. Sophia Kennedy
02. Candidasa