DJ Koze

DJ Koze has earned acclaim for crafting unusually inventive yet widely appealing tracks, positioning him among the boldest and most reliably engaging figures in techno since the turn of the millennium. Born in Hamburg, the producer pairs an affinity for inviting melodies with a bold embrace of sonic experimentation and a playful, eccentric wit. After an early obsession with hip-hop, he shifted toward house sounds, emerging by the mid-2000s as a prized talent on the Cologne-based Kompakt imprint. High-profile reworkings of material by Matthew Dear, Battles, and Caribou expanded his reach, paving the way for the 2013 album Amygdala, his most overtly melodic statement up to that moment. Following the German Top Ten arrival of Knock Knock in 2018, he helmed Róisín Murphy’s Hit Parade and assembled Music Can Hear Us, due in 2025 and introduced via the Damon Albarn collaboration “Pure Love.”

Born Stefan Kozalla in Hamburg, Germany, he first drew notice for his standout turntable abilities, placing second in a 1988 DMC contest at age sixteen. Throughout the nineties he belonged to the hip-hop collective Fischmob and later issued material under the Adolf Noise alias. His initial commercially available mix collection, Music Is Okay, appeared on Yo Mama in 2000, preceding the launch of the lighthearted dance project International Pony, which secured European distribution through Columbia. Around the same period Kozalla rose among Kompakt’s principal contributors, beginning with the September 2003 track “Der Säger Von St. Georg” on Speicher 11 and the three-track EP The Geklöppel Continues. The next month he completed the follow-up mix All People Is My Friends, issued by the label the subsequent January. He sustained an output of daring, boundary-pushing singles and remixes while issuing the albums Wo Die Rammelwolle Fliegt on Buback in 2005, Kosi Comes Around on Kompakt the same year, and the guest-laden Amygdala on his own Pampa label in 2013. Two retrospective sets, Reincarnations: The Remix Chapter 2001-2009 on Get Physical and Reincarnations: The Remix Chapter 2009-2014 on Pampa, gathered much of his frequently mesmerizing remix catalog.

In 2015 Koze curated the fiftieth volume of !K7’s long-running DJ-Kicks series, using the platform to highlight his enthusiasm for left-field hip-hop and pop alongside house. The next year he presented the unmixed Pampa, Vol. 1, featuring exclusive contributions from Lawrence, Isolée, and Gold Panda. The later Reincarnations collection, DJ-Kicks, and Pampa, Vol. 1 each registered on Billboard’s Top Dance/Electronic Albums chart. Buoyed by those compilations, he focused on his subsequent studio album, Knock Knock, which surfaced in 2018 with appearances from Róisín Murphy, Speech, José Gonzalez, and Bon Iver and reached number seven on the German albums chart. Murphy later enlisted him to produce her 2023 release Hit Parade, and toward the close of the following year he issued “Pure Love,” the lead single from Music Can Hear Us, slated for April 2025.