Nearly a decade has passed since Kompakt's Total 3—the zeitgeist-defining compilation that turned me, and scores of longtime fans, onto the Cologne label in its heyday—hit the shelves. Some things never change: the latest entry in the Total series is a reliable-as-always tour through the state of Kompakt circa 2011.
As with Total compilations past, Kompakt (and minimal techno) fans are likely to find Total 12 hit-or-miss to some degree. This time around, though, the ratio is much improved due to Kompakt's decision to scale back the collection to half its usual length—the first time it hasn't spanned two bloated CDs since Total 5. That means there are fewer tunes to chew on, but the quality control is much better. There is but one dud to my ears: Matias Aguayo's cloying "I Don't Smoke," in which two characters volley a pointless question back and forth over an unremarkable house track: "Rebolledo, do you have a cigarette?" ... "No, I don't smoke, I don't smoke." Good to know, guys.
Luckily, Aguayo's uncharacteristic flop is the outlier. The lion's share of Total 12 is solid, with highlights to be found at various turns. One of those is Belgian producer Kolombo's "Waiting For," which kicks off the compilation with a disco-influenced rhythm, accented by shimmery keyboards and a lyric which reads poorly on paper, but is secretly fit for New Order circa 1987: "Is this love worth waiting for / something special, something pure?" After a pair of remixes, Superpitcher's "White Lightning" ups the ante—as his first new material since his stellar 2010 LP, Kilimanjaro, it has more thrust and throb than anything on that full-length. Gui Boratto adds a thick, distorted slice of techno with "The Drill," far grittier than 2007's sublime Chromophobia, and an effective teaser for III, his upcoming full-length for Kompakt. There are two tracks from Kompakt figurehead Michael Mayer—one solo, one GusGus remix—and both are worth hearing.
There are a couple gems hidden deeper into the unsurprising 80-minute runtime, including a fantastic cut from the Modernist, Jörg Burger's alter ego of sorts. "Remodernist" boasts Total 12's most immediate, danceable hook; it is a fine contrast to Burger's classic '90s trance release with Mike Ink, Las Vegas. Elsewhere, parallels abound: Coma's "Playground Altona" is a near-Xerox of the shuffling rhythms and oscillations of LCD Soundsystem's "45:33"/"Someone Great," while Wolfgang Voigt's "Frieden" plays like a minimal techno update on the Durutti Column's "Otis," 30 years down the line. (Both are enjoyable nonetheless.) Total 12 closes with a track from a new Burger/Voigt project, Mohn: the dark, evocative "Tiefental," which runs thick with low-end drone and trance-heavy rhythms. Naturally, it sounds unlike anything from Total 3, and it makes for a colorful exclamation point—and a fourth-quarter highlight—on Total 12.
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