About two-thirds of the way into Music Can Hear Us, DJ Koze drops a secret weapon on listeners in the form of an exceptionally short and spooky cover of “Vamos a la Playa.” With German artist Soap&Skin on vocals, Koze strips away everything that makes the 1983 song from Righeira an Italo disco classic. The beat is gone. The “oh-oh-oh-oh-oh“ is replaced with a faint breath in the background. What remains are the lyrics, a story about going to a radioactive beach. It’s creepy af. I love it.
The problem with the 21st century’s persistent ‘80s nostalgia is that most people miss the point of a whole decade’s worth of pop culture. They’re like, “the music was so much better.” But, the music was good because people were making perfect pop songs about nuclear annihilation and the evils of capitalism. It’s protest music for the Reagan-Thatcher era that, tbh, probably went over people’s heads back in the day too. (There’s a similar argument to be made about movies here too, but we’ll save that for another day.) Koze and Soap&Skin bring the point to the forefront of this cover version.
Koze is probably best known here in the U.S. for the 2018 club hit “Pick Up,” where the German DJ/producer twisted samples of “Neither One of Us (Wants to be the First to Say Goodbye)” by Gladys Knight and the Pips and “Pick Me Up, I’ll Dance” from Melba Moore into one of the decade’s saddest, most irresistible bangers. He also has three previous solo albums, loads of singles and stellar remixes to his credit. (For those of you who went to the Lash, his spin on Låpsley’s single “Operator” appeared in my sets there often.) More recently, he produced Róisín Murphy’s 2023 album, Hit Parade.
Koze’s style is very eclectic and a little experimental while still being fairly accessible and, if you’re new to his work, Music Can Hear Us is a good point of introduction. He draws from an incredibly broad range of styles for this album, often melding them together within a single song. Similarly, the list of collaborators is quite varied and includes Damon Albarn of Blur and Gorillaz, Peruvian DJ/producer Sofia Kourtesis, Markus Acher of Notwist and Japanese vocal group Marewrew, amongst others
But, back to the “Vamos a la Playa” cover, it’s actually in two parts. The song right before it, “A Dónde Vas?” asks in Spanish, “where are you going?” Soap&Skin responds by singing in German, to the Righeira tune, a phrase that Google Translate says is “we’re going to the beach.” As the song progresses, her “oh-oh-oh-oh-oh” becomes more of an “uh oh” and the whole vibe shifts from dreamy nostalgia to existential dread for the remaining three minutes and change. A strange, scratchy, somewhat industrial noise lurks in the background of “A Dónde Vas?” and segues into “Vamos a la Playa,” where the vocals sound very much like a ghost in a machine.
I don’t know if there’s a theme throughout the album, but “What About Us,” which appears earlier on Music Can Hear Us does sound like it’s connected to “Vamos a la Playa.” It’s a forlorn, indie electronic song, where Markus Acher’s lyrics seem to be talking about war. “Unbelievable,” which sits between “What About Us” and “A Dónde Vas?,” plays as if it were pulled from a time capsule. Even some of the clubbier tracks on the album, like “Die Gondel,” have a very unnerving quality to them, as if they’re recordings unearthed from some kind of wreckage by a distant future generation. Much of the music here has a dreamlike sound, whether you’re talking about “Brushcutter,” a drum and bass track with vocals from Marley Waters, or the album’s fantastic closer, “Umaoi,” where vocals from traditional Upopo singers Marewrew are reconfigured into a doowop-style song.
All that is to say that Music Can Hear Us is a very strange album, but I mean that in the best way possible. I half-expected a Planet of the Apes-style twist at the end of the album because the way the past, present and future converge here makes me thinking that Koze is bringing together so many different styles of music to tell a story about us.
Get Music Can Hear Us by DJ Koze.
Liz O. is an L.A.-based writer and DJ. Read her recently published work and check out her upcoming gigs or listen to the latest Beatique Mix. Follow on Instagram or Bluesky for more updates.
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