- Benjamin Brunn's new Colour Tracks is a complex construction; it's a 19-track journey through 35 years of electronic music—a massive undertaking in itself—arranged across four 12-inch picture discs according to a color visualization of the genre and the length of the individual track. We've got acid (forest green), electro (purple), Chicago house (pink) and techno (orange) organized by speed and tempo. Each track was meticulously crafted to suit the vinyl medium—each color strip is as wide as the track is long.
With over a decade of experience as a producer, Brunn proves his knowledge about the complexities of each style. "B1 - Deep House" recalls the thumping techno and Chicago and Detroit house he absorbed as a teenager at the VOXXX club in Chemnitz. "C2 - Ambient" is gentle and meandering, in accordance with Brian Eno's theory that ambient music should be "as ignorable as it is interesting." Andy Warhol says "yes" and "no" on loop in defiance of an interviewer's unimaginative questions on "F1 - Lyrics." "G1 - IDM" surveys the mind-bending sounds that emerged with Warp's landmark Artificial Intelligence series and continue to influence beatmakers worldwide.
Design is also a huge part of why this project is so compelling. Created by German firm KOREFE—the same people who produced the world's first edible cookbook—the Colour Tracks package comes with a stunning 13-page booklet containing a handy colour chart, a neat interview with Brunn about his early experiments and theory of techno as both a tool and a toy, and blurbs explaining each track (genre, tempo, how it was made). Even for those less geeky about production, Color Tracks is still a fascinating audio-visual trip through the vast expanses of electronic music.
TracklistA1 A1 - Techno
A2 A2 - Disco House
B1 B1 - Deep House
B2 B2 - Electro
C1 C1 - Techno
C2 C2 - Ambient
C3 C3 - Minimal
D1 D1 - Ambient
D2 D2 - Deep House
D3 D3 - Ambient
E1 E1 - Chicago House
F1 F1 - Lyrics
F2 F2 - Deep House
F3 F3 - Chicago House
F4 F4 - Lyrics
G1 G1 - IDM
G2 G2 - Chicago House
H1 H1 - Acid
H2 H2 - Acid