Justus Köhncke & Dirk Leyers - An Ounce of Memories
If you were silly enough to pay money for Kompakt’s latest overblown mediocrity (Total 7), your listening adventure would have begun with a wonderful understatement: Dirk Leyers and Justus Köhncke’s magnificent “Grey Skies to Blue,” a track which evoked the spirit of classic melodic minimalism that made both Kompakt veterans’ previous gems like “Maria,” “Departures,” “2 After 909,” and “Jet” so outstanding. Here’s more of the same/difference, but with vocals. Releasing the EP with an instrumental and vocal version of the same track seems to suggest three things: that the track is strong enough to stand on its own; that both versions offer a unique listening experience; that people will either definitely want OR not want to hear “An Ounce of Memories” with its vocal. Fact is, the track does stand on its own without the vocal—does that make it extraneous? In instrumental form, “An Ounce of Memories” conjures that wonderful “open sky” feeling that Leyers pulls from his mesmeric melodies. It’s harder to hear Köhncke’s sound signature, or at least, Leyers’ contribution bleeds the cheese out of Justus’ disco, leaving a whimsical, light-minded tug that pulls the track into the light. With Eric D. Clark’s (Whirlpool Productions) vocal added, we get a pale version of Jay Haze’s wonderful “Soul in a Bottle” or Schwarz, Ame, and Dixon’s “Where We At,” leaving these heartstrings thoroughly untugged.
Firm / FIRM 20
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[Peter Chambers]