The Floor is Lava, by Michael Mayer

The Floor is Lava

by Michael Mayer

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Carousel Super groovy house beats, modernly complex and maybe even with a message. Kompakt folks are wonderful. Had a great time at the album launch at their home store in Cologne last Saturday. Favorite track: The Problem.

Régis Schneider This sounds amazing!!!
Fantastic stuff 🤩 Favorite track: Ardor.

matewills Heavy rotation - had the chance to be in store and in the club for the presentation
Very deep and often surprising.
Great performance Michael

labus1979 I love Kompakt

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1.	The Problem 04:13	buy track
2.	Vagus 05:29	buy track
3.	Feuerstuhl 05:31	buy track
4.	Kiss And Tell 04:55	buy track
5.	Brainwave 2.0 06:00	buy track
6.	Ardor 05:33	buy track
7.	Sycophant 05:04	buy track
8.	The Solution 06:04	buy track
9.	Süsser Schlaf 03:59	buy track

about

Michael Mayer albums don’t come round too often, which is one of many reasons why his fourth collection, The Floor Is Lava, is a genuine event. It’s been eight years since his last one, the collaborative & released on !K7; its predecessors, Mantasy (2012) and Touch (2004), took their sweet time, too. It’s no real surprise, given the many hats Mayer wears – globetrotting DJ, revered remixer, inveterate collaborator, and boss of both Kompakt and Imara – that his solo productions are relatively sparing. But this also speaks to their quality: Mayer’s name on a record sleeve is a sign of quality, of music that’s both looking to the future and calling back to the past, that balances the imperatives of the dancefloor and the loungeroom, that’s as exploratory as it is functional.

On The Floor Is Lava, Mayer seems to be taking the temperature of both the music that surrounds him (past and present), and the ides of the industry he works within. There’s that iconic album title, for a start. “The album’s mindset,” he says, reflecting on those four words together. For Mayer, it’s partly a critique of the way the industry boxes in both producer and listener, focuses them on genre, on market, on the next new thing: “Being a free minded spirit that transcends genres has become an uphill battle.” A battle worth fighting, though, and with The Floor Is Lava, the result is an album that’s varied, quixotic, idiosyncratic, charming, and deeply, addictively listenable.

Throughout, Mayer finds thrills in exploration and juxtaposition, allowing unexpected things to blossom and giving them their life, their platform, throwing the listener exciting curveballs: “It’s a DJ album by a DJ that’s easily bored.” Either easily bored, or endlessly curious, The Floor Is Lava is rich with ideas. It opens with “The Problem”, which looks back to look forward, embracing the rickety way early house productions threw samples together with gleeful abandon. Mayer mentions Pal Joey, and the scene around Rockers Hi-Fi and their Different Drummer imprint, as reference points, and you can hear that freewheeling spirit throughout.

It’s followed by “Vagus”, a slinky, sensual minimal house number that Mayer describes as his “musical catnip”. The flow of these two opening cuts defines the dynamic of The Floor Is Lava, defining the dialectical drive at its core: thesis and antithesis leads to synthesis, but with a welcome prickliness that means you’re always excited, always engaged. It’s also productive in the way it derives energy from rubbing genres and sounds against each other, in unexpected ways, for maximum musical frisson. There’s psychedelic techno on “Feuerstuhl”, more minimal techno with “Ardor” (Mayer mentions ‘Immer 1’ era 90s minimal as inspiration), slippery, Shepard-tone breakbeat through “Sycophant”, a lovely, lush vocal turn on the poppy “The Solution”.

The album closes with the melancholy “Süßer Schlaf”, where Mayer sets a poem by Goethe to one of his most haunted, moving pieces of music yet, in abstract tribute to a lost friend. It’s one of the most affecting moments on The Floor Is Lava. There’s also an update on 2020’s wild Brainwave Technology EP, with the surrealist glitter-stomp of “Brainwave 2.0” (check out those handclaps!), where Mayer’s thinking about the socio-political precipice of the now: “I’m reading with great interest about this whole complex of how humanity is about to cross so many lines and the implications that the resulting financial and educational inequality will bring.”
That’s The Floor Is Lava: then and now, brainwaves and nerve structures, problems and solutions, genres on fire; the real, the unreal, and the surreal. An album for the easily bored and the endlessly curious. Mayer has the last word, telling us all you need to know about the album’s spirit: “Burning for the cause, being zealous, being addicted to the heat of the night, the exuberant powers of music.”

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released November 1, 2024

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Michael Mayer Cologne, Germany

Michael Mayer is one of the leading German tastemakers in dance music and his DJ sets have influenced a
generation (or two) of musicians and fans. Mayer remains tirelessly dedicated to his work as a DJ, in the studio or
behind his desk at KOMPAKT, the label he co-owns. His recording career spans four albums, 23 EP’s, nearly 170
remixes and the legendary DJ mixes for fabric and Immer. ... more

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Nov 15

Rough Trade Berlin

Berlin, Germany

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The Floor is Lava

by Michael Mayer

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about

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Streaming + Download

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