Record of the Week: DJ Koze - Pick Up [Pampa Records]

It’s as if DJ Koze’s new track, 'Pick Up', has heralded the spring. This sunny, simple, disco track is honey-like and grin inducing, and has all the makings of a huge summer classic. The track is the final one to be revealed from DJ Koze’s upcoming Knock Knock, a 16-track LP which includes collaborations with Jose Gonzalez, Bon Iver, Mano Le Tough and more, and is being released on the 4th May.

Released on Pampa Records, Koze’s label that he co-owns with Marcus Fink, the record is his first studio album in over five years, and is shot through with typical Koze eccentricity. The bold choice to use the same vocal sample as Midland’s 'Final Credits', arguably one of the most popular dance tracks of the last two years, plays very much to his favour. He keeps the track, ‘Neither One of Us (Wants to be the First to Say Goodbye)', significantly more intact, sprinkling it with a simple string-led instrumental. The song is a straightforward slapping together of several samples, and sounds almost like something from a mixtape in its cyclical, uncomplicated structure, which is smoothed out with glisteningly smooth production. The accompanying video is refreshingly humorous; a blank screen, with simple subtitles along the bottom describing the song in words such as ‘disco sample slowly gets hypnotic/ brain realizes song consists of these few elements/ deep feeling of happiness/ because brain already has too much information’.

Congratulations, Koze, on a completely magical anthem, which is carefree, nostalgic and unbearably groovy.

Buy: 12" / Digital
Pre-order Knock Knock: Vinyl / Digital

Words: Dora