5. Knock Knock / DJ Koze

Ever since DJ Koze warped my all-time favorite song into something wistful and groovy, The D Man has been paying attention, elusive as the German producer might be.  It took me at least twenty looks at Knock Knock's cover to find Stefan Kozella shapeshifting into the branches of the tree.  Figures.

DJ Koze is a trickster.  Like the wily character in a fairy tale possessing secret knowledge and using it to disobey conventional rules, DJ Koze mashes genres and bends house, garage, hip-hop, soul, and dance music in unexpected and visually-arresting ways.  He weaves strange psychedelia through his tracks, lending his production a distinctly textured and lived-in feel quite unlike anything from his peers.  The fact that he does not churn out a ton of club filler also increases the emotional heft of his material.  Notwithstanding his excellent DJ Kicks series and some worthwhile remix records, DJ Koze has only released three studio albums since 2005, each one impeccably curated.

Like 2013's Amygdala, Knock Knock is brimming with ideas and an utter sense of joy and abandon.  Each track fully inhabits its own musical world, allowing listeners to luxuriate in gloriously disparate headspaces.  Despite endless detours running almost two hours, the record's sense of cohesion is staggering.  Every listen yields up new moments worth exploring, summing to a masterstroke of contemporary electronic music.

Great guest spots include Speech's old-skool bars on the bass-n-guitar bounce of "Colors of Autumn"; Jose Gonzalez's melancholic croon on the sunny "Music On My Teeth"; Sophia Kennedy's lording command on the space-jazz of "This Is My Rock"; Roisin Murphy's down-tempo diva spin on "Scratch That"; and Kurt Wagner's laconic synth-speak to the nocturnal ticking of "Muddy Funster."  An African-American hip-hop artist, a Swedish acoustic hero, a German-based indie vocalist, an Irish singer-songwriter, and a Nashville alt-country iconoclast--DJ Koze can make heady use of them all.

DJ Koze's samples are also thrilling.  Two of the best: Justin Vernon and Gladys Knight.  It's almost cheating by sampling Bon Iver's "Calgary" on the track "Bonfire," as Vernon's falsetto lights up almost any genre.  Here, it hangs over the house like an apparition, as throbbing beats try to dispel it back to the deep of the woods.  On "Pick Up," Gladys Knight's haunting voice breaks your heart: "It's sad to think / I guess neither one of us / Wants to be the first to say / Goodbye."  Propelled by Daft Punk-style beats and filaments of lonely guitar, "Pick Up" touched the skies when DJ Koze played it at this year's Coachella, and it keeps scraping them play after play.

Timely and timeless, Knock Knock contains multitudes.