Koze's work is full of surprises. There's always an element of the unexpected in his music, and his tracks often drift in unusual or counter-intuitive directions – just when you think he’s going to pull a rabbit out of a hat, he shoots one out of a cannon. He's a coy bastard, too. Unlike a lot of producers, even the biggest of Koze’s anthems somehow leave you standing on the verge of getting it on. The same is true of his DJing – you want him to go all the way, but he leaves you throbbing for more.
This EP is Koze all over for those reasons – it's subtle, surprising and off-kilter. Not only that, but it’s tantalisingly short.
Jan Jelinek’s version of 'My Grandmotha' is Koze's original exactly as one of Jelinek's 'Farben' colour series might remember it. It shows a discreet but definite link with Koze's sound design that I hadn’t noticed, whilst reconstituting it within his own definitive microworld.
Audion (Matt Dear) totally transforms 'Raw', taking a track that was (for me) one of the less exciting numbers on 'Kosi Comes Around' and remaking it in the image of his own sound signature. Is this even a remix? What does 'remix' mean when the spirit of the original is barely audible, if at all? We’ve travelled far from the 80s, when a 'dance remix' meant dubbed vocals and reverbed-out drum fills. In any case, the finished produced is a real slow burner and quite similar to the 'River Camping' EP released late last year on Minus under Dear's 'False' moniker.
Koze also offers a remix of his own 'Bobby', which shows him somewhere between the spectre of his understanding of himself and Jelinek, but reproduced as a Superpitcher track. It’s the lesser of the three, but enjoyable nonetheless.
There's enough interesting material in either the Jelinek track or the Audion number – to get both, plus a reasonable Koze track, should be satisfying... except that I'm left wanting more. But it is Koze after all.
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