DJ Koze Just Wanted To Dance

It is a bit trite to immediately cast out the title of the album, but indulge me. Music Can Hear Us perfectly describes what you’re about to hear, a cloying, self-satisfied paean to “a runaway rollercoaster in a zigzag through a parade of planets” if you’re to believe the liner notes. This is the statement of a person who believes music can cut through any geopolitical tension and then refuses to not perform in Israel. It’s truly classically European DJ, in its grandiose aims and “coexist” mindset, while serving as a fitting soundtrack to festivals bankrolled by arms dealers.

I had to relisten to Knock Knock to assuage myself I wasn’t crazy after this. It turns out “Pick Up” is so good it was blinding me to how mid the album was the whole time. Call it the Chance the Rapper effect, where an artist releases something so bad the paradigm has shifted to the point you’re questioning if they were good at all. I’m not calling Music Can Hear Us the same as The Big Day, but it does have the same inane sensibility, both DJ Koze and Chance being so far up their own ass you struggle to see the music fit for public consumption.

Much love to my friend Walden Green at Pitchfork, but when he says Koze imbues the music with a sense of “childlike wonder”, I see it less in the Animal Collective/Daniel Johnston mold, wherein they re-construct the world around them as only a kid could see, and more of an executive making decisions on which IP to market to children next. Pharrell’s Lego movie music, if you will. Every “world music” trope used feels straight out of my NPR tote-bag liberal hippie childhood, where yoga moms would greet each other with “Namaste.” It is a startlingly guileless record—Ibiza-ready, not far from a slightly more inventive Calvin Harris or Martin Garrix.

Pained, I keep going back to “Pick Up”. I would easily put it up with the best songs of the past 10 years, that devastating Gladys Knight sample producing one of the great modern French house tracks. A delicious simplicity nowhere to be found here, cluttered with vocal features that evoke pop albums whose goal is to juice their Spotify and Apple Music numbers by way of SEO. DJ Koze has somehow been elevated above a Tycho or Bonobo, whom are both rightfully derided as “Lo-fi Beats to Chill to” music. Maybe this should be called “Lo-fi Beats to Colonize to”.

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