Pop Goes Kompakt!

Wolfgang Voigt may be regarded as the father figure of Cologne's Kompakt label, but Michael Mayer is, in many respects, its primary spokesperson, given his frequent DJ appearances around the globe. But despite numerous singles for the label, Mayer has never felt like one of its more prolific artists; it took him nearly a decade to get around to releasing this, his solo debut.

Unsurprisingly, it sounds very much like a distillation of the energies driving Mayer's DJ sets. It's frontloaded with ballsy, hard-hitting stompers, like "Touch," "Heiden" and "Neue Luthersche Fraktur," that retro-fit early '90s Frankfurt trance with unlikely touches of disco, New York house and even funk. What Mayer occasionally lacks in rhythmic sophistication, he makes up for with his ear for expansive, unusual tone color; his synthesizers feel less like waves of sound than shuddering, gloopy forms. The latter half of the disc represents Mayer's inclinations away from the dance floor. "Lovefood" is dreamy, romantics' pop with muscle; "Funky Handicap" is a drunken shuffler for the lover that didn't expect to come home from the club alone. The closing "Amabile" is Mayer's contribution to the swinging, shuffling Schaffel sound, a Kompakt favorite. It's a rhythm that can often evoke waltzing hippos, but in Mayer's hands, it's done with grace and even tenderness.

For Kompakt's landmark 100th release, the Cologne label came up with a doozy of an idea: to offer its core artists the chance to remix their favorite track from the label's back catalogue. The results, which fill two CDs (or four pieces of vinyl), cover virtually every facet of the shape-shifting label: punchy, jewel-toned, synth-heavy house; beatless, pastoral ambiance; grinding, uncompromising techno; and eccentric electro pop. Representing this last style, Justus K—hncke featuring Meloboy's "Hot Love" is easily the strangest cut on the album, turning T. Rex's glam-rock staple into a synth-popschlager crossover dripping with camp; love it or hate it, the song's an undeniable reminder of the fact that Kompakt has never limited itself to minimalism, though restraint generally does rule the day. Dettinger's lilting "Intershop (Jonas Bering Mix)" is a high point of the label's ambient output, nodding to both Erik Satie and the Orb; the latter make an appearance, remixing Ulf Lohmann's "Because," in an andante haze. Several classic hits — Superpitcher's "Tomorrow," Closer Musik's "Tomorrow" — are given worthy updates that make their sources start to feel almost like pop standards — which, one suspects, might well be Kompakt's goal for all their releases.

Matias Aguayo's 2008 song "Minimal" may make fun of the eponymous genre — "Cause that music got no groove, got no balls, no me hace pumpin' pumpin' pumpin'" — but that doesn't mean that maximalism is the only option left. In truth, the 2005 solo debut from the Chilean/German musician, a former member of Closer Musik, is about as perfect as minimal house gets. Produced with Markus Rossknecht, the album's nine tracks construct deadly effective grooves out of little more than unvarnished drum machines and squelchy, bass-heavy analog synthesizers. While their beats hew to the Teutonic precision of house and techno, their lurch and languid pace both owe almost as much to hip-hop's minimalist origins. (Not coincidentally, Aguayo and Rossknecht also use MPCs, the hip-hop instrument of choice.) And while he'd never be mistaken for a rapper, Aguayo also puts his voice front and center here, ranging from gravelly lows to a wispy falsetto. He's no traditional vocalist, though: the pair have sampled and spliced Aguayo's grunts and whoops, fitting it into the rhythmic matrix as just another percussive sound, one even more immediate than the overdriven oscillations of their keyboards. Anyone looking for "un ritmo más nocturno, más profundo, más sensual" will certainly find it with Are You Really Lost?.

Anyone complaining that German electronic music is too self-serious need only look to Justus Köhncke for evidence to the contrary. The Cologne DJ and producer's grounding in disco and electro-pop keeps his music feeling lighthearted — in the case of a song like "Hot Love," his contribution to Kompakt 100, Köhncke can be positively (and wonderfully) campy. For the most part, Was Ist Musik doesn't venture too far into full-blown absurdity; the album's title track is as close as he gets, with great Gamble and Huff-style string vamps, acid burbles and showboating vocals combining in a beautiful mess. Dance-floor numbers like "Jet" and "Lucienne" see Köhncke pursuing a more traditional (but still quirky) approach to retro-flavored disco and house in the vein of Daniel Wang or Metro Area. A handful of German-language songs may have the most traction with listeners predisposed to Weimar cabaret, but "2 After 909" ought to please any fan of melodic dance music that's rich in synthesizers. Barbed with a bass hook that's almost impossible to shake loose, it's sounded like a classic since the day it was released. Increasingly, it's becoming just that.

The title may sound dreary and grammatically clumsy, but Music to Fall Asleep is anything but. Produced by Sebastian Meissner (Random Inc., Bizz Circuits) under the alias reserved for his nominally "ambient" releases, the album does, in fact, make a wonderfully soothing bedtime soundtrack, but its richness of detail and powerful subconscious tug invite, and perhaps demand, daylight rewinds. Clearly influenced by Brian Eno's Music for Airports, Meissner sends lone guitar plucks spinning into an ether of dub delay and digital effects. His pacing owes much to Harold Budd's measured, fluid sense of tempo, using echo and reverb to slow the apparent passage of time, but his tones are pure 21st century: like Fennesz, Meissner uses his computer not as an instrument of precision, but rather as a means for smearing sound into a scratchy, resonant haze. Acoustic guitars creep like morning glory over sampled strings; sometimes, ghostly vocals or piano seem to murmur in the background, but ultimately it's almost impossible to determine the specifics contributing to Klimek's rolling, wind-tunnel drone. Impossible, at least, when awake: listened to horizontally, this captivating album unlocks a world of hypnagogic logic.