Review

Favourite Artists

MY DEAR

My Dear • 2023

Denis Stockhausen’s MY DEAR party series at the Gewölbe in Cologne celebrates its eleventh birthday. To mark the occasion, the Berlin-born DJ has brought together the dancing public’s favourite artists – and certainly his own – on a ten-track compilation. Whereby one could almost drop any reference to women, because mostly men from the ranks of the old heroes can be found on »MY DEAR«. Steffen Laschinski aka Rising Run is responsible for the opening track, which sounds as profound as his pseudonym. The second number is also a success, with DJ Koze laying down a bouncy dubstep beat under circling synths that cleverly harmonise with the bassline. Wassermann’s »Röslein Rot« is immediately recognisable as a Wolfgang Voigt track. Over the stoic four-to-the-floor beat with bass roll and strings, which wouldn’t look out of place on GAS releases either, things start to get relatively clubby. Voigt lives up to his affinity for Schlager music with a sample of the folksy Goethe banger »Heideröslein«. The Fantastic Twins contribute contemporary, breaky bass music, Robag Wruhme comes up with a lively, extremely cleanly produced electro track à la Lanark Artefax in the guise of Bogdan Marx, and Jürgen Paape finds himself in musical La La Land once again with slightly moronic whistling. The ten predominantly successful tracks paint a picture of a musically varied event that would never spurn a sense of the melodic – some would even call it pop – as a dance companion.