DJ Koze: The magic loop

Sunset at Coachella. Outside the white walls of the Yuma tent, the skies around the Empire Polo Grounds are exploding in hues so rich, your eyes water just trying to take them all in. In nearly impossible washes of color, purples bleed into oranges only seen on the covers of sci-fi novels about the moons of Jupiter. Beyond the giant Ferris wheel blinking in the dusk are a row of palm trees so majestic you’d think they were placed there as part of a production set. And underneath it all, a sea of humanity meanders from one end of the field to the other in crossing currents. The excitement is palpable, the energy seeming almost to distort the scene like heat waves.

But on the other side of those flapping white walls, inside the simmering Yuma tent, a sensory experience transpires that threatens to melt the flimsy plastic. On a turntable booth fashioned of corrugated aluminium, set under a giant shark-shaped disco ball, DJ Koze has begun a journey that holds the hundreds inside rapt.

Deep, pulsing waves of bass throb from the bins at a tempo more aligned for an opening set than the Saturday night slot at one of the world’s biggest music festivals. It is an atmospheric, slow build: the drop of a cowbell line, the swelling rises of synths, the introduction of maracas. It’s music of nuance, which you might think lost on the oft-maligned Coachella crowd. But with every shaker introduced, and every punter dancing with eyes closed and head bobbing euphorically, that fear fades.

Despite what the high street might try to sell you as ‘the Coachella look’ the festival is huge and diverse, and you see just about every tribe. In the Yuma tent, however, things get a little more focused: the outlook lies somewhere between dirty downtown techno afterhours and Coldwater Canyon pool party.

“Yuma is meant to be a nightclub-style environment – reminiscent of an underground club,” the production designer of the tent, Steve Lieberman, will tell us later that week. “We are the antithesis of the stage set-up: we have no video and no production riders. DJs and artists come into the room and they play: down and dirty.”

With that mandate you can see why Koze was hand-picked to play here, on this night, at the coveted sunset slot. The path the cerebral German producer blazes is not so much climbing up a mountain of drum fills and canyon-bombing down bass drops. It’s more like crossing a flowering pasture, slowly and steadily, each step as vivid and aromatic as the next.

All of which is to be expected given his production output. First releasing three albums on Kompakt, Koze founded his own Pampa Records in 2010 and has since further defined his sound on tracks like last year’s ‘XTC’ (#8 in Mixmag’s tunes of 2015), and his remix of Moderat’s ‘Bad Kingdom’ (#4 in 2014). His quirky, sonically diverse DJ Kicks #50 mix was splendid, but it’s his ‘Pampa Vol 1’ comp, featuring artists from Axel Boman and Stimming to Roman Flügel, Michel Cleis and Jamie xx — that reads like a resume for his particular sound.

“Through my heart, my heart, my heart…” filters out of the speakers, new material from Koze sparking a huge rise in energy. One smiling young woman shimmies in front of the stage in white vest and pink acid-wash Daisy Dukes while her boyfriend pogoes up and down in trunks, red Vans and a striped blue-and-white headband. His T-shirt reads “Go Get Staff”, and he couldn't grow a beard if he were stranded on a desert island. These kids are clearly having a blast. Matter of fact, everyone is.

Almost everyone. “I have no emotions; I am a techno machine,” responds Koze flatly when we ask how the show went. Only moments after dropping his new track to wild excitement, Koze, aka Stefan Kozalla, has retired to his trailer and is dipping nacho chips into a jar of Tostitos salsa. “I need to work on my ‘famous’ skills, so that it’s not so important who’s playing on the biggest stage. Every ten minutes it felt like an entirely new, different crowd walked in.”

One thing you have to grow accustomed to is the manner in which Koze speaks, essentially Germanic stabs of bone-dry humor. It takes a while to work out when he’s being sincerely self-deprecating and when he’s purposefully messing with you. “But it was much too hot in there – I would like it if somehow they could reduce the sun next time,” he continues. “Americans have a flag on the moon; why can’t they do it on the sun?”

If Koze was at all frustrated by the rotating currents of the audience, the crowd he looked out at from under the glimmering maw of the Shark Disco Ball must have been different from the one we observed from among the great unwashed. Eschewing the easy temptation to build and build to a manufactured climax, they followed him in cultish fascination and were rewarded by that final, crowning moment of communal bliss.

“That’s a new track for me – it doesn’t even have a name yet. It’s not even mastered!” he says. “I don’t know what I can tell you, but every time I play it the roof is like, CRSSSHHH!” he continues, making the sound of a waterfall. “Because everyone thinks it’s the new Daft Punk.”

The song in question is barely a month old, built around a single guitar loop with little else but prototypical Koze restraint for around 10 minutes. As can be expected, the minimalism works.

“It’s a little bit too melancholic [to be Daft Punk], but it’s their idea that you need only three elements with a simple change – either of a bassline, or the decay of a loop. It’s enough, you don’t have to overdo it; you just have one magic loop, and then you change what’s below. The vocals are maybe different, though; not euphoric or hysterical, but melancholy. It’s sad disco!” he laughs. Then he looks at me in mock suspicion. “You’re hunting for headlines, aren’t you? That’s the headline: ‘Sad Disco’!”

The track could be huge, we say, our words nearly drowned out by the 4/4 kick driving from Mano Le Tough’s set through the thin trailer walls. “I hope so. This is my last shot. Seriously, if this doesn’t work I’m going to become a farmer. I’m going to go and grow olive oil in some lost Spanish garden.”

Spain – and the idea of locality – influences Koze in countless ways. He has for years called a certain corner of Catalonia home, a town we won’t name because he wishes to keep it sacred. But it doesn’t matter so much as the idea of environmental context, of how the soil under your feet feeds creativity.

“Your surroundings change the way you make music. Not so much that you actively get input from a place, but the opposite: that you don’t get musical input,” he explains. It’s now several days after Koze’s Coachella set, and our environment has changed radically as well. Gone are the thumping kick-drums and intoxicating Jupiter sunset; in their place the bougainvillea garden of a Venice Beach coffee shop. The serenity seems to befit Koze; dressed in a flowing shirt, baggy pants and floppy newsboy cap he looks like he drifted in from the yoga studio next door.

“No-one’s heard of Daft Punk or Kraftwerk where I live,” he says. “If someone asks me what I do and I say I make music, they ask me if I know the Rolling Stones or Deep Purple. I love it. It’s so uncool and untrendy,” he smiles. “It’s so unhip, it’s perfect.”

There’s a long walk Koze takes when he’s producing tracks, a mountainous hike that winds through orchards and forests, along the ocean and up cliffs. “Sometimes I hike in the mountains alone, for hours, listening to the drafts I’ve produced on headphones. And then I arrive in the city and I know what to do with the music,” he says.

“Everything is super-clear in front of you when you go outside. If I leave the building where I made the music, and bring it to nature, for me everything becomes clear. When I’m sitting in front of the computer, I don’t see it.”

When he’s finished listening to his latest work, Koze cues up his favourite artists and walks the Catalan landscapes. Sonically the production must compare with Maceo Plex, Herbert, Brian Eno, Animal Collective et al. It is a relevant sonic palette to work with, given that his last full-length, 2013’s ‘Amygdala’, featured the likes of Caribou, Matthew Dear and Rhye.

“If there is no depth, or if it is too pumping, it won’t work. It has to compete with the music you love,” he explains as bougainvillea shadows dapple his face, the warm Cali breeze doing its best to transport us to that same Iberian coast. Coachella, Spain, Venice Beach – in the end, for Koze, it’s all about the beats that soundtrack your journey.

“Music must be something which touches or moves us. Or perhaps we don’t understand it, but we can feel there’s something behind it. Say if it’s abstract and we don’t get it yet, but we have to listen to it often – that’s a good sign.” He pauses, takes a sip of his iced coffee, then reconsiders. “That might even be the best sign.”

'Pampa Vol 1' is out now