Customer Reviews

Here Comes Love

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You can always count on Kompakt releases for a smooth and enveloping listening experience and Here Comes Love by Superpitcher is no exception. After releasing a slew of singles and remixes, Aksel Schaufler has dropped this 9 track, hourlong journey of kick-drummed sex songs.

Okay, so not every song is about sex, but they might as well be with his minimal but warm production and super-breathy vocals that appear on all but one track. "People" opens the album with an echoing bell sound and quickly builds a juicy bassline warble, a steady thumping beat and aforementioned vocals by Schaufler. Technically speaking, the song is very simple, with only subtle changes in the music throughout and a couple of lines of vocals that are repeated throughout the song. It's sort of like what you'd get if you took a song by Underworld and stripped it down to its most essential elements, leaving all the vocal gymnastics and other flashy tricks behind.

Of course, the great thing about the release (and something that makes it nearly hypnotic at times) is how Schaufler is able to hold attention with very minor changes in songs. He definitely has an ear for the slight tweaks that keep things interesting, and whether its the rubbery beat and quiet melodic progression in "The Long Way" or the backwards loops in "Lovers Rock" that pop out at just the right moments to punctuate the galloping beats, the release is far from repetitive.

The weakest part of the album is no doubt the middle third of the 9 tracks, as "Traume" gives vocal reigns to Charlotte Roche and comes off sounding like a watered down trip-hop track while "Fever" is a cover of the familiar track and tosses all subtlety out the window and suffers because of it. Fortunately, the album picks up nicely in the latter third and even ups the ante with what is probably the best track on the release in "Happiness." Shuffling with a stuttering piano riff, the track easily takes on the most aggressive feel of any track on the release and pounds away before giving way to stirring quiet sections that build the tension for when the beat will drop again. In the three years since his first single on the label, it seems that Schaufler has embraced everything from pop to the minimal Cologne sound and has managed to boil everything down into the very listenable and infectious Here Comes Love.

(from almostcool music reviews)

What the artist achieves on most of the tracks is a composition that is far greater than the sum of the parts. Superpitcher knows how to sculpt sound to his needs, and creates subtle, sexy, sophisticated passages of music to house his whispered vocals. If you don't dig male vocals in your techno, you may want to look elsewhere. I emphasize that overall I'm impressed with his singing, and find it fits snuggly into his toe-tapping, feverishly bouncy house production. It is perhaps best to think of the vocals as an essential ingredient in the song's sound-texture, rather than the song's focal point as in a rock group.

This record falls in the category of "just OK" It's not bad, but it's boring enough to not listening it very often, I liked the superpither's tracks included in the kompakt's compilations, but this record is more like electronic-indie-pop, vocals have the lead in the mix, and beats are pushed backward, not to mention the beats are not great (except in the first track: "People")... You won't hate this album, but you won't love it either.

i love superpitcher's rhythm and balanced minimalism, which i learned about from some of his tracks on the kompakt total collections, e.g., baby's on fire (kompakt total 4) and mushroom (kompakt total 5). (you can get those on amazon.de.) but insipid lyrics get in the way of good listening ... and i guess i'm not crazy about his voice, either.