Cmd Q – Nine
Late last year we published a feature by Nic Tuohey on new Leipzig club, Institut fuer Zukunft, and it was there I first came across the term: hypezig. As Tuohey explained it’s the city’s newest nickname, a tongue in cheek expression directed at the amount of people moving there for cultural and commercial reasons. Before hypezig, though, there was Kann Records, a bastion of Leipzig’s music scene with a unique bent for melodic, melancholic and minimal house and techno. They throw a great party too.
A decent chunk of the label’s music comes from founders map.ache, Sevensol & Bender; the latter’s Professional Youth Club 12” was a highlight from last year, and the former’s “Carnival” cut from a 2010 various artist release is a timeless classic if you ask me. The label’s first record for 2016 comes from the as-yet unheralded Cmd Q, an alias you’ll probably only know if you’re at the city’s Conne Island club each weekend. For the rest of us we can only assume it’s someone German or maybe a Kann super group?
The thumping 808 kick drum of A-side cut “Nine” is almost enough to sell you from the start, with choppy 909 hi-hats and staccato white noise percussion completing a rattling groove DJs will love. Bitter sweet synths enter and twinkle over the top of the drum programming and develop into something more song-like than repetitive as it progresses, setting a tone that’s weighted perfectly between moody and dreamy.
The B-side’s “Epigon” is stretched out over 12 minutes and has a slight electro, underwater and dubby feel but not enough to warrant citing Detroit’s infamous deep sea divers. A cascading synth that reveals itself does however have a holy, profound Prince Of Denmark-like timbre with reverberating after-tones making some parts of the track feel as though they were recorded in a lost cathedral sunken somewhere in Atlantis. Believe the hype.
James Manning
Tracklisting:
A. Nine
B. Epigon