100 Jahre Einsamkeit: Markus Detmer Plays Staubgold

Markus Detmer is the owner of Staubgold Records, a label he founded in Cologne in 1998. For its 100th release, he has taken it upon himself to create a DJ mix drawing on the label's back catalog. (This release will mark the end of the Staubgold label in its old form; in the future, downloads and CDs will be released by Staubgold Digital, while vinyl will be released by Staubgold Analog.) This retrospective ramble makes clear what a glorious mess Staubgold has made of its release list: there's the Krautrock/hip-hop fusion of Faust and Dälek's "T-Electronique," the clangorous experimentalism of To Rococo Rot's "Autonachmittag," the dubwise freak-reggae of Flying Lizards' "Shake," and the deeply creepy cut-and-paste Dadaism of Heaven And's "Bye and Bye I'm Going to See the King." On "Ain't No Grave," Ekkehard Ehlers deconstructs a Delta blues song and makes it sound like gospel music for heroin addicts, while Curse ov Dialect deliver avant-garde hip-hop that sounds downright mainstream in this context (note the brilliant but not overly showy turntable solo, and the fiddle obbligato). What sets this album so far apart from most of the DJ-mix pack is its brazen and unapologetic eclecticism: you'll hear country and jazz inflections, four or five varieties of pop and rock, hip-hop and club music all running one into the other. Here's looking forward to another 100 releases like these (or, more likely, unlike them).