Name: Was Here
Brand: Yotam Avni

Bonus disc

Bonus disc: No

Catalogue number

KOMPAKT419

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Colour

Black

Colour details

Discogs ID

Format multiplier

Download code

Download code: Yes

Rough Trade Exclusive

Rough Trade Exclusive: No

Extended format

Extended format: No

Format detail

Format Music GB

Limited edition

Release date

2020-05-29

Signed copies

Signed copies: No

Supplier GB

Tax rate GB

Standard:20

UPC / Barcode

4250101414572

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Total Cap

2 / Extended format: No / LP / Rough Trade Exclusive: No / Signed copies: No / black

KOMPAKTCD157

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Download code: No

4250101414589

{"blocks": [{"data": {"text": "4250101414589"}, "type": "paragraph"}]}

1 / CD / Extended format: No / Rough Trade Exclusive: No / Signed copies: No

Artist

Yotam Avni

Genre GB

Techno / Electro

Label GB

Kompakt

Kompakt is a renowned music label that was established in 1998. It originated from the transformation of Delirium, a record shop founded in Cologne in 1993. The label operates from its base at the Kompakt record store, which also features an online shop. Over the years, Kompakt has expanded its services to include artist booking and distribution for various artists and labels. Led by Wolfgang Voigt, Michael Mayer, Jürgen Paape, and managed by Jon Berry (4), Kompakt has become a prominent figure in the music industry.

With a rich history spanning over two decades, Kompakt has solidified its position as an influential force within the music scene. Its commitment to quality and innovation has garnered them widespread recognition and respect among both artists and fans alike.

As an esteemed label with *Kompakt* as their flagship brand, they have cultivated a diverse roster of talented musicians who continuously push boundaries across genres such as electronic, techno, ambient, and experimental music. Their dedication to curating exceptional sounds has made them a go-to destination for music enthusiasts seeking groundbreaking releases.

It’s taken Yotam Avni a little while to get to his debut album; almost a decade, really, since his debut 12”, That’s What The World Needs, on California’s Seasons Limited imprint. During that time, the Tel-Aviv based producer has refined his productions, tightening the groove and paring everything back to bare essentials; the power in an Avni cut is its combination of piston-pulse propulsion and a deep, but gently applied, musicality. This combination gives his techno productions added heft on the dance floor, but also a lyrical sensibility that places him squarely in a tradition of techno legends who somehow manage to make the four-to-the-floor a space of poetic intensity, of rigorous joy.

Avni’s been on Kompakt’s radar for a while, first appearing on the label last year, with his Speicher contribution, Mañana Mañana. (Track For Agoria, from that EP, also appeared on Total 19.) The connection immediately made sense – dance music that managed to feel both lush and streamlined across the same great gasp of late-night energy. But with Yotam Avni Was Here, he’s taken a huge leap. After a brief intro, Avni sets his stall with Beyond The Dance, which features slow-moving vocal melisma over sculptural, melting tonalities, a tintinnabulating, harpsichord-like two-note phrase pacing out the track. Then It Was What It Was comes into view, its strip-light textures suddenly placed into sharp relief by a muted trumpet figure that hangs in the air, melancholy and pensive.

It’s no surprise, at this point, to discover that Avni’s inspirations for Was Here took in the histories of both techno and jazz. “I wanted to try something more around Detroit Techno meets ECM,” he reflects, when explaining the motivating forces behind the album. “Carl Craig’s Just Another Day EP and Kenny Larkin’s Keys, Strings, Tambourines came out during my high school years and had huge impact on me.” Avni’s also appeared on Transmat compilations, and remixed artists like the Midwest’s Titonton Duvanté, and Orlando Voorn – the latter particularly important for the way he connected the Detroit and Amsterdam techno scenes – his career path is marked by ongoing connections, direct and indirect, to Detroit’s storied history.

“I always wanted to go back to those hi-tek soul roots on a full album,” he continues, and he’s definitely exploring that terrain here, with the sky-strafing brass on Free Darius Now, morse-code keys on Vortex and glitchy, microhouse tickles of Know Hope all contributing to an oblique narrative that seems to arc across Was Here – one fleshed out by guest musicians, who include dop and Gerog Levin on vocals, and trumpets by Greg Paulus (of Beirut and No Regular Play). The cover art makes the jazz connection explicit, riffing on the text-based, minimal design of The Modern Jazz Quartet’s 1955 album for Prestige, Concorde. But the way Avni has gathered around him both inspiring musicians and intriguing reference points makes me think of his broader career as well, the collectivism behind his Avadon nights in Tel-Aviv, his many and wide-ranging releases on labels like Innervisions, Hotflush and Stroboscopic Artefacts, and the openness of his productions, which seem to be all about the multiple, the possibilities of cross-pollination, of fusing this with that, of adding and subtracting, all under the pulsating thumbprint of techno. Good things, after all, are worth waiting for.

Was Here

Music GB