100

We Say...

Review by Michaelangelo Matos

There have been a lot of crucial German techno auteurs in the ’00s, but my sentimental favorite is Riley Reinhold: former journalist, label head, producer and DJ who often goes under the name Triple R. The latter guise is the one under which he produces a seemingly endless string of smart DJ-mix sets, among them the absolutely perfect Friends (on Kompakt) and the half-dozen-and-counting Selection series for Trapez, one of Reinhold’s labels. That series speaks for itself well enough as the stronghold for Reinhold’s more high-impact, stripped-down dance workouts. This compilation works a little differently, as befits the label it represents, Traum Schallplatten. Traum 100 showcases Reinhold and company in dreamier mode than on Trapez, but it’s hardly ambient — there are beats, but they pulse beneath rather than pull the music forward.

Compiling this 11-song set, Reinhold starts things off more than right, with San Francisco’s Broker/Dealer, one of those acts that does one basic thing very well — in this case, soft-focused, deceptively smooth electro-house that sounds merely background-y at first but, upon closer inspection, has more connection with Eno at his most becalmed. From there, highlights stud the thing. Thomas Brinkmann decks out a brisk, mechanical and oddly sexy electro groove; Moonbeam blow bubbles in space over a clinking, rolling, glistening percussion loop and sine waves used like trumpets in a James Bond theme; Process’s “City-Zen” ends things as gracefully as Broker/Dealer ushered them in, the blissfully naïve spirit of early IDM pulsing in its dayglo veins. And the boss man has his hands in maybe the best cut, Jesse Somfay’s “The Days of My Youth Ended with Broken Bottles,” remixed by Reinhold together with Dominik Eulberg, whose chunky percussive touches and swaggering string theme give it an anthemic sweep. (It’s also much longer on the eMusic version of this album than on the CD release — also true of Dominik Eulberg’s “Es klebt noch Morgentau in deinem Haar.”) Here’s to the next 100.