DJ Koze: Reincarnations: The Remix Chapter 2001-2009

Dance-music lovers have been waiting for this collection, and so might psychedelic-music fans who want to see just how many gorgeous surprises their ears can take. Reincarnations collects 13 remixes (plus an intro) by Hamburg’s Stefan Kozalla, a.k.a. DJ Koze, and it’s persuasive argument for him as the most consistently audacious, dazzling techno producer of the decade. Almost none of these tracks resembles each other much, and a number don’t resemble much of anything else, either; Koze has been able to consistently take risks while never seeming too serious, and most everything here has a dappled luxuriousness that you needn’t be a dance-music fan to appreciate. But in spite of the strikingly serrated re-imaginings of German folkie Wechsel Garland and ’60s pop singer Hildegard Knef, most of this shows Koze’s genius at using the standard house-music four-four thump to string a seemingly endless array of ideas on: the glow-in-the-dark disco bubblebath he gives Matias Aguayo’s grunting “Minimal”; the spooked, pretty electro—with haunting lullaby vocal—into which he redirects Battles’ post-rock field-march “Atlas”; the falling-down-drunk sideshow jazz of Nóze’s “Danse Avec Moi.”