“…Ultimately, Berghain 04 falls short of being truly compelling; the air of exclusivity and the Berghain brand name may undoubtedly swing it, but Berghain 04 is far more proficient than it is gripping…”
[Listen | Purchase] This is the 4th in a series of mix CDs associated with Berlin’s Berghain club on Ostgut Ton, a label whose recent tumescence to techno engorgement has coincided with the slow shrivel of minimal; maybe no coincidence, its crepuscular neo-industrial heft standing in stark contrast to the latter’s spindly frame. The kind of abrasive techno and jacking house espoused by Marcel Dettman’s Berghain 02, along with other Ostgut releases, has waxed hard as the likes of Minus and Perlon have waned. As for this Berghain mix series, Dettmann set the bar, Andre Galluzzi’s preceding 01 having been merely solid and Len Faki’s subsequent 03 overly diffuse. Time to see how Klock’s 04 winds up.
In comparison with his own work, Berghain 04 retains some of One‘s sense of sublimated physicality, though opening moments indicate a less Klock-work Ben; Ross 154’s mellifluous ambience opening out to the neo-goth organ-fuelled syncopations of DVS1’s “Pressure,” then into the evacuated chill and swooning pop-vox wraiths of Dettmann’s Junior Boys remix has Klock populating stock elements with distinctive features. A slick switch is pulled to harness Dettman’s thrifty thrust into the skip and swing of Martyn’s “Miniluv,” an amalgam of Broken Beat, Dubstep and deep house tropes. After a transition from a queasy STL locked groove into Levon Vincent’s clunky dys-funk-tional horn-festooned “The Long Life,” we start to enter a more familiar edifice populated by stony stare and hard floor, as Jonas Kopp’s “Michigan Lake” touches Base(ic Channel). The centre, however, somehow doesn’t hold, as Kopp transits to Act’s “RoHd” and Mikhail Breen’s “Veracity,” all greyscale thump-by-numbers affairs. Rolando’s “De Cago” gets into the groove with a bit more feeling, and Kevin Gorman shifts the paradigm onto a slightly steppier axis, further sustained by Klock’s own more liquid grooves on “Compression Session 1.” The end sequence works better, Klock’s “Elfin Flight” streaked with Elif Bicer’s vox in a Berlin Funky approximation segueing into the atmospheric comedown of Rolando’s trip-hop-tinged “Junie.” Points in between move between sub-genre nuances, though the listener may flit from a feeling of filler (Tyree’s weak-kneed vocally-challenged “Nuthin Wrong” and a grim-jawed retool of an Echologist track) to feeling full (the stuttering blank-firing of James Ruskin’s “Graphic”).
In sum, Berghain 04 sees Klock ranging broadly within his tech-house church, offering more variation on a 4/4 theme than most. He eschews buildup-breakdown Big Moment-premised dynamics in favour of a more homogenised flow. His DJ chops are evidenced in a seamless sequencing sometimes verging on the robotic. There’s little of the bully-boy relentlessness of Dettmann, less of Faki’s over-studied variety, more a sort of logical progression. But this is where Klock’s success is also a partial failing. There are sections where the ride feels over-safe, and, a slide into autopilot sets in. It may be conceded that this is merely a symptom of his mix-style, working with hypnotic grooves and subtle builds. At the same time, one can’t help thinking Berghain 04 in essence offers no more than many of the guest DJ mixes regularly doled out free via likes of Fact, Resident Advisor, or the mnmlssgs and Little White Earbuds blogs. Ultimately, Berghain 04 falls short of being truly compelling; the air of exclusivity and the Berghain brand name may undoubtedly swing it, but Berghain 04 is far more proficient than it is gripping.
Berghain 04 is out now on Ostgut Ton. [Listen | Purchase]
