DJ Koze: “Wespennest” [ft. Sophia Kennedy] Track Review

DJ Koze is a master of the ambivalent banger—body-moving anthems steeped in melancholy. There’s his 2015 single “XTC,” where he asks if the drug ecstasy is like a lie, “sweet in the beginning and bitter in the end.” There’s 2018’s “Pick Up,” a Gladys Knight–sampling epic about two lovers regretfully saying goodbye. More recently, there’s his production on Róisín Murphy’s “Fader,” a glitter-spangled slow dance that is as mournful as it is triumphant. He returns to this ambiguous territory with “Wespennest,” his first EP release this year, and a teaser for a new album set to drop in 2024. The beat is tough and stalwart, setting a sturdy kick drum and insistent hi-hat marching in lockstep. It could power through the thick of a marathon session, made for dancefloors where closing time lies on the other side of sunrise.

Rosy synth chords at first seem like a premonition of the dawn, but the mood darkens when Sophia Kennedy joins in. Kennedy, an American singer-songwriter based in Hamburg and signed to Koze’s Pampa label, has a rich, dusky contralto and a knack for perceptive lyrics, and on “Wespennest”—German for “wasp’s nest”—she distills her intensity into just a handful of sharply observed lines. “Through the window glass/I see the trees/They gently blossom anew,” she begins, in German. It’s a scene full of promise, but all that pastoral optimism abruptly wilts with the final twist of the stanza: “First the bud then the rest/A soft rumbling from the wasps’ nest.” Beneath this deceptively bittersweet song lurks a hint of foreboding.