[Cocoon Recordings]

Johannes Heil is one of a rare breed of producers who can wake up one morning and discover he’s accidentally penned another album in his sleep. Since his debut in 1995 the German stalwart has notched up more than fifty releases, including an impressive nine albums and a bucket-load of remixes. His skills are transferable across many different genres, as at home crafting brutal, skull splitting techno as he is at etching out elegant, graceful electronica. His releases are often supported by intricate imagery, both visual and written; the latter not always easily decipherable, in the way that only English as a second language can be. However, the message on Loving, Heil’s new album for Cocoon Recordings, is clear: the veteran producer is paying homage to the music through love and vice versa. With that as his mission statement, Heil explores the full spectrum of color on his palette, mixing between disco flavored house, glitchy, intricate techno, warehouse filling club tracks and more.

One of his strengths is his ability to turn his productions into sonic architecture, which has meant that even his most simplistic ideas come across sounding fully realized. This is most evident on the track “Glockenspiel,” where Heil shapes the track around child-like chimes, something he has done in the past on “The Chains of Babylon” from the Future Primitive album. But where “The Chains of Babylon” was a slice of big room rave, “Glockenspiel” remains a kinetic, understated piece of tech house. The opening track, “Hallelujah” is also immaculately sculpted and a real throwback to some of Heil’s older work where he wasn’t afraid to chop up break beats and use them in a techno setting. Resonant jungle drums are slowly beaten, augmented by machine made claps and the buzzing of flies, wild animal calls and African chants. It’s Heil at his playful, experimental best, and despite being the opening track it’s one of the album highlights.

Other points on the album sound staid and formulaic in comparison. “To the Groove” feels like tech house filler while “Freedom of Heart” lacks just that. Listening to some of Heil’s older work, I feel like the signature stamp embossed on those is missing here and that makes Loving feel like more a collection of singles than a cohesive album. That stamp Heil put on his work was perhaps the influenced of some of the other artists on Kanzleramt on which he released so much of his previous material. But whatever it was, it was a feeling he carried through his albums, a real feeling he was trying to make his tracks as synthetic as possible, a merging of himself with the machines he was using. That’s not to say it is completely absent here, as tracks like “A Holo Static,” “Hallelujah” and “Glockenspiel” all possess that undefinable quality that made Heil’s tracks stand out in a crowd of doppelgängers. Furthermore, that doesn’t call into question the quality of the tracks that has made for his latest album, as some of the most un-Heil sounding moments are still very enjoyable (“Loving” and “Twentythree” are both good examples). But for the most part, Loving could be an artist album from any number of a bunch of producers, which is a shame considering the ability Heil possesses to sound so individual.