Justus Köhncke - Fussmaschine

  • Share
  • Back in the disco-cruising days of Whirlpool Productions when, from town across town, everybody was trying to get down, a colleague of Justus Köhncke's whispered down the mic, "from disco to house at the click of a mouse." You could maybe say it's a phrase that has stayed with the German over the years; you could definitely think of worse ways to describe "Fussmachine." There's the suppressed, but not entirely silenced, sound of strings swept under the track's carpet. They certainly come from a disco record whose graceful beat-shuffle Köhncke has sampled and siphoned into a light-handed, playful house tune with great chords and one very memorable key modulation. As the latter happens, a hi-hat starts to swing and drums begin to fill, but as if on a thimble-sized kit that is tight and subtle; you might even say compact. Lasertom sensibly keeps the modulation in his remix, and elsewhere does little to alter the melodic path. He slides the pitch down and layers '80s synth sounds over the original's Rhodes silk to create a perfectly listenable, if less classy, variation. The happy-go-lucky mood turns contemplative on "Renewal," a track produced by the same Köhncke of "Advance," as opposed to "So Weit Wie Noch Nie." The beats are broken, the key is minor, the bassline dark and there are no such mood-lifting chords. But it presents the kind of contrast that defines the title and, in no small part, Köhncke's career.
  • Tracklist
      A Fussmaschine B1 Fussmaschine (Lasertom Remix) B2 Renewal
RA