Review
Genre and Mood
Kölsch called it Grey, but the track is anything but: melodic techno built for epic dance-floor moments, nostalgic in its theme, euphoric and uplifting in its release. It belongs to techno by its beat and to wider electronic music by its melodies.
Song Summary
Grey first appeared on Speicher 93, a Kompakt 12-inch released on 30 September 2016, where the label described it as brass-infused and, with its flipside KIR, pushing for epic dance-floor moments. A year later it became track five of 1989, the album that closes Kölsch’s autobiographical trilogy. The album remembers his early teens, a time he describes as the greyness of it all: grey feelings, grey weather and his own grey face. His parents were divorcing; he escaped on his skateboard with a Walkman, and in his words found a soundtrack to his grey life, and suddenly there was colour.
Musical Breakdown
No source walks through Grey section by section, so this breakdown follows what the label and the critics describe.
Main Section
Kompakt names the brass as the track’s colour, set over what it calls propulsive techno beats.
Climax
On the album’s grey tracks, Kompakt hears the distinctly Kölsch-esque moment of epic melodies breaking through the beat like the sun through stormy clouds. That breakthrough is the point of the track.
Concepts in Focus
The breakthrough is the payoff of a build-up: tension held under a steady beat until the melody arrives. Jaeger heard 1989 working through great swathes of uplifting crescendos and noted that some liken it to late-1990s trance, though the album plays at more reserved tempos and with more complex melodic phrasing. Compare the slow climb of Kölsch – Bloodline (feat. Tomas Høffding) from the previous album.
Grey’s first life shows club culture at work. Kompakt’s Speicher series is a long-running line of club 12-inches, and Kölsch’s tracks often appear there before an album collects them; PUSH, the album’s hit single, was first heard on Speicher 97. On MusicBrainz the album version carries its own ISRC, separate from the 12-inch’s.
Artistic Context
Kölsch is the Danish producer Rune Reilly Kölsch. His trilogy of albums on Kompakt is named after years of his life: 1977, the year of his birth, 1983, a childhood journey across Europe, and 1989, released on 22 September 2017. Several of its tracks are named for grey in different languages, Grey, Grau, Grå and Gris, and the album also brings in Gregor Schwellenbach conducting the Heritage Orchestra and the Norwegian singer Aurora.
Impact and Reception
Kompakt counted Grey and KIR among Kölsch’s best work so far. Jaeger found the album honest, like a producer laying his emotions out in the open, and heard songs like Grey as magnificent, kaleidoscopic sonic adventures, nothing like their title. Play it when the weather is grey and wait for the sun.
