Amygdala - DJ Koze (2013)
German DJ Stefan Kozalla had been around for some time as a club DJ and “competitive turntablist” (a thing I didn’t know existed til just now) before he co-founded his own record label and started releasing music that way. I was going to say “more pop-structured songs as records,” but a lot of this isn’t particularly pop-structured.
The journey-to-the-center-of-your-brain style of “deep house” provides the sound context for a lot of this. It’s not banging dancefloor music but is still markedly dancy.
The lyrical tracks are often fun (and maybe silly? My German’s not very good). A lot of the more upbeat tracks remain pretty minimalist and never explode out into full body music like you might expect.
I listened to this while doing a lot of driving in the rain, and it was an excellent companion to the weather.
RIYL
Also highly recommended (moreso, really) is Koze’s followup to this one, 2018’s Knock Knock
