Doppelleben Justus Köhncke

Often you will find that one life is not enough to deal with all the things that you would like to do. Yet, as an exception, we are not talking about the traditional objective values like: a house, a child, a tree. If you have an artistic bent, it is more about the question of how to express all the ideas a creative mind is obsessed by. When it comes to Justus Köhncke, he is actually obsessed by a helluvalot of things. This guy is really like a sponge and seems to have soaked in the whole history of pop music with all its inherent, structural beauty and styles. Five years after his debut album “Spiralen der Erinnerung” (iCi Recs.) and two years after his KOMPAKT longplay debut “Was ist Musik”, it was high time to wring out the sponge again that was full of impressions he has collected during his numerous spectacular freestyle DJ-performances all over the world and where he combined both, KOMPAKT's techno message with the disco jewels of the last three decades in a breathtaking way. And he is full of knowledge that originates from his regular, quasi-scientific analysis of his all-time, most favourite songs. Köhncke is someone who sometimes loves to pass composing C parts as his hobby (the „C part“, also known as „middle eight“, is the part of a song that is neither strophy nor refrain; most of the time, it is the third part of a song indicating the final refrain. the C part is often combined with changing harmonies. A wonderful tool, but unfortunately, it has almost disappeared since the late 1980s in favour of more clubby structures). And it is this highly emotional combination of exploratory spirit with unlimited obsession that makes Justus Köhncke the Alexander von Humboldt of pop music. The title of Köhncke's album “Doppelleben” („double life“) already shows the musical splits he does - a fact that makes him an absolute exceptional artist. On the one side, he is fighting on the front line of up-to-date club sounds (Justus' track “Timecode” was one of the biggest consense hits in 2004), on the other side, he plays the pop card so unrestrainedly and sentimentally, killing the two birds again with one stone. On CD, everything is combined, on vinyl however, the two poles are separated from each other in a stylistically sensible way. For the club, Justus brings up his big guns on another 12“ release: “Elan/Taste”, and the pop elements come along in the most traditional format ever: the single LP. This is chic, feels great and sounds brilliant, of course. “Doppelleben” has been realized in co-production with Fred Heimermann, one of Justus's long-time companions and co-founder in the early stages of legendary Cologne weekly partythrowers/DJ/production-collective effort “Whirlpool Productions” (used to be the avantgarde of the house music movement in Germany, feat. Hans Nieswandt, Eric D. Clark and Justus Köhncke... “From Disco to Disco”, their 1996/7 novelty hit bizarrely catapulting them like by accident into international pop charts top notches) you surely remember...). “Doppelleben” seems to integrate again the apparent contrasts in a most natural way: “Schwabylon” is hard and elegant cruising disco funk Daft Punk would have loved to add to their recent album; “Herz aus Papier” is a cosy ballad called made in cooperation with Barbara Morgenstern; an there is the intoxicating, exotic and psychedelic version of “The

Answer Is Yes” and of course Köhncke's famous brand, his German electronic pop music for the charts of tomorrow (“Wo bist Du”, “Alles Nochmal”). Heart of the album is the 10-minutes disco monster track “Elan”, because in this track everything starts to vibrate that has made Justus Köhncke the noblest disco knight of modern times. An oscillating promise, a great, seducing gesture, but the promised redemption remains unattainable. Because the disco act has to last all night long. And because of: Who'll be the “late” to come, will be the last to smile. “I'll do it, as long as I can dance to it!“ - the one-line-lyrics of “Schwabylon“.