michael mayer: mantasy

Kompakt is pleased to announce the sophomore album Mantasy, a long-awaited, indispensable update of Michael Mayer's production sound and an essential release for the label in 2012. One tends to think that it's relatively easy: you make some sounds, you launch a label, you release some records. Ultimately, electronic music is known for its short chain of command. Accordingly, Touch (KOMP 036CD/KOM 107LP) was created in just a few weeks. Indeed, the masterful sequencing and high production value bear witness to an artist in full control of his medium. You may think of the release as a "DJ album," not so much describing an album for DJs, but rather one from a DJ. The album's title refers to the escapist momentum of a cinematic journey into the unknown, a tribute to history's great explorers, and also an intimate trip to the core of the Kompakt sound itself, whose main ambassador has always been Michael Mayer. Fittingly, the voyage starts with the panoramic "Sully," a flawless ambient study that opens the gateway to the world of Mantasy, which -- hardly definable, but always palpable -- relates to a romantic spirit of adventure, curiosity and nostalgia, yet far less concerned with the past than with the future. A case in point is "Lamusetwa," a track where memories and dreams collide in a most satisfying manner. The minimal funk of "Wrong Lap" and the Italo disco reminiscences of title-track "Mantasy" follow suit: the dance machine is fired up, the sky rips open, epic synthesizers roam the landscape driven by precision beats and hypodermic bass lines lure the inner cinema back onto the floor. Then "Roses" finds its broken glamour in the dusk of the club, sporting a gloomy beauty only reinforced by the well-lit detour into "Baumhaus." "Rudi Was a Punk" tightens things up and rides the airwaves with a lead foot, followed by "Voigt Kampff Test," a science fiction thriller disguised as a dance track, and then an adrenalin-fuelled "Neue Furche" (trans. "New Groove") transfers both the name and the sound of Nu Groove, one of Michael Mayer's all-time favorite labels, into a new idiom. Eventually, Mantasy's last track "Good Times" waltzes in, sung by Whomadewho's man of a thousand voices, Jeppe Kjellberg. It's an ode to nightlife utopia, to hands thrown in the air and the feeling of belonging, when you know that this is the place, the sound, the crowd you want to be with.

Michael Mayer - Good Times (Smartphone Version)