Kompakt Total 18/ Various - Kompakt Total 18 (Various Artists)

Ideas call for realization, realizations turn into habits, habits then quickly turn into traditions, and traditions become an intrinsic part of culture. Born at the turn of the new millennium as a symbol of a new era for electronic music, Kompakt's longstanding Total series returns with it's 18th iteration, the essentials of the label's releases over 2017 and 2018, a period of intense activity, and extended breadth of resources, blowing out it's 25th birthday candle with the breath of a young, throbbing heart. Introducing faces new and familiar, full-scale hits and criminally overlooked tunes, Total 18 recollects glorious moments on the dancefloor and further intimate ones between friends, inviting the listener to flick through a family album marked with tracks as distant yet eerily close as Sonns highly sensual "Tame" and John Tejada's propulsive "Detector", Terranova's elegiac "Let It Fail" and Rex The Dog's mind-altering "Crasher" but also, and as usual, it's lot of unreleased cuts. With a handful exclusive deliveries courtesy of label co-founder Jürgen Paape - here making a rare appearance with the humbly-titled opener "Well It's Paape", &nd's one-and-only Aaron Ahrends with the nostalgic "Eyes Closed", Tobias Thomas and Michael Mayer as Thomas/Mayer, Lebsanft & Raquet and the poetic synthesis of "Signale", Cologne figure Jörg Burger on electro-punk-wave mode, minimal Danish talent Christian Nielsen and Voigt & Voigt for a session of left-of-center techno, Total 18 sweeps the spectrum back and forth, navigating from the deeper umbra onto the brighter shades seamlessly. Total 18 moves and shifts, from the power of dancefloor-oriented pieces such as Tom Demac & Real Lies' "White Flowers" (here presented in it's house version), Dixon's silky revamp of Vermont and Gui Boratto's euphoric club weapon "Forgive Me" onto the funky electro pop flavors of Fahrland, cosmic dub-tech jazz of Ghost Vision, and robot bounce of T. Raumschmiere's "Augen Zu" for a whelming tour d'horizon. CD version features: Jürgen Paape, Sonns, Beesh, Tom Demac & Real Lies, Aaron Ahrends, Thomas/Mayer, Terranova, Sifa & Ivory, John Tejada, Anii, Vermont, Dixon, La Marine, Fahrland, MZ Sunday Luv, Lebsanft & Raquet, Jono Ma & Dreems, Jörg Burger, Rex The Dog, Gui Boratto, Christian Nielsen, ANNA, T. Raumschmiere, Voigt & Voigt, Animal Print, Kölsch, Enzo Elia & Musumeci, Marc Romboy, and Ghost Vision.