DJ Koze's Colorful New Single Is Seasick in the Best Way

Even in his more prolific periods, every release from the German producer DJ Koze has a way of feeling like it comes out of nowhere. He's made a career over the last couple decades existing mostly out of step with prevailing scenes and styles, charting the psychoactive outer regions around house and techno, emerging every once in a while for another dopamine drip of a release. Back in 2013 he released his last full-length, the brain-chemistry altering Amygdala, and though he's released a couple of brilliant singles and put together a blissful compilation for his label Pampa in the interim, he's been uncharacteristically quiet.

On May 4, five years and change after the release of Amygdala, he'll break his longform silence with a new record called Knock Knock, which if only the list of guests is an indication, will be a journey as out-there as the rest of his releases. Across the record's 16 tracks there'll be appearances by the glossy pipes of Róisín Murphy, the chill folk experimenter José González, Lambchop's Kurt Wagner, Mano le Tough, and Speech of the band Arrested Development, of all people.

Today, he's also shared the first taste of the record in the form of "Seeing Aliens," one of the record's guestless tracks, that nevertheless shows of the continued expansiveness of Koze's vision. It's an eight-minute exploration of off-kilter kick drum rhythms and seasick synth parts that feel like someone broke the saturation controls on a CRT TV. Like the best moments on Amygdala there's almost a progginess to the way Koze jolts between the tracks overlapping rhythms, a precarity that it might all swiftly come tumbling to the ground, like an overworked busboy rounding a sharp corner. Of course, it all holds together in this tense and beautiful way that basically only he can manage.

The track also comes with a similarly woozy non-album B-side called "Nein König Nein" and the two tracks are available today on Pampa on an EP called Seeing Aliens. Stream both of those below alongside the tracklist for Knock Knock, which is due May 4.

Knock Knock Tracklist:
1. Club der Ewigkeiten
2. Bonfire
3. Moving in a liquid (feat. Eddie Fummler)
4. Colors of autumn (feat. Speech of the band Arrested Development)
5. Music on my teeth (feat. José González)
6. This is my rock (feat. Sophia Kennedy)
7. Illumination (feat. Róisín Murphy)
8. Pick up
9. Planet Hase (feat. Mano le tough)
10. Scratch that (feat. Róisín Murphy)
11. Muddy Funster (feat. Kurt Wagner)
12. Baby (how much i LFO you)
13. Jesus
14. Lord knows
15. Seeing Aliens
16. Drone me up, Flashy (feat. Sophia Kennedy)