Lopazz Kook Kook

• Words: David Hemingway
• Label: Get Physical
• XLR8R Rating: 8.5/10

Stefan Eichinger runs multimedia label 800achtspur, has scored films, and even remixed the Miami Vice theme. To suggest his debut album for Get Physical is actually kooky would be stretching it, but there’s an intriguing playfulness to tracks like “2 Fast 4 U” and “We Are.” Nevertheless, the wonky funk of Kook Kook is cut through with an odd melancholy. The techno nostalgia of “The Old Days”–in which an unidentified voice recollects “Sometimes I miss those old machines with the big tubes in them.../The whole business is different nowadays”–is most overtly downcast, but even the invite to “share my rhythm” (on the track of the same name) sounds oddly subdued. Lovely stuff.