- Kompakt Speicher releases used to be so darn rigid you needed jackboots to dance to them, but recently they've loosened up. Their 44th volume features the Cologne label's Latin lover Matias Aguayo on both sides, teaming up with the equally romantic Superpitcher on the ‘Lick the Pipe’ and with previous collaborator Markus Rossknecht on ‘Overthat’. The two tracks that pleasantly tread water, like splashing about nude in a grimy jacuzzi.
Thankfully, Aguayo is no Georges Zamfir so his pan pipe playing on ‘Lick the Pipe’ is restricted to little puffs up and down the register, leaving the rest to Superpitcher's Aksel Schaufler. It's minimal in the sense that not much is present (shakers, a typically Superpitchian bouncing bassline, punchy drums and pan pipe), nor happens, but it's noisy and pleasingly odd. Superpitcher's tearjerking chords and neon synths are abandoned in favour of a gritty driving skank, accompanied by a small troupe of Andean buskers. The charred sound throughout hints that Schaufler may have set the pipes on fire, giving this the machismo usually reserved to toughboys on Areal or Auftrieb rather than his pop-savvy standard.
Rossknecht had a heavy hand in Aguayo's 'Are You Really Lost' LP of 2005, a gorgeous, loping collection of skewed romantic techno-pop that kept tempos below 120 for a while, and he's now given equal billing under their duo project Broke. Apart from upping the tempo, however, 'Overthat' shows they ain’t over their earlier efforts: this sounds like a facsimile of the album. The same love-drunk vocals are smeared all over - one low, slurred and unintelligible, the other feminine and unintelligible - and we're still dancing knee-deep in bass-heavy treacle, only now, at normal speed it's not as slinky. Nonetheless, slowed down both it and 'The Pipe' should be hits at kinkier S&M bars if not your standard venue.
TracklistA Superpitcher - Lick The Pipe
B Broke - Overthat