Miwon: "Amidst"

So that’s where Miwon has been. Having spent 2010 becoming a father and playing club nights in Belgian train stations, Germany’s laptop aficionado has now crossed the Atlantic and begun plotting with his contacts in Oakland. n5MD was always a label that could logically have hosted Miwon—both deal in sweet, hyper-programmed pop music—and, while his native imprint City Centre Offices slides to two releases a year, the American label have offered the German a chance to take hiatus in style. For upcoming covers compilation The Reconstruction of Fives, Hendrik Kröz has been invited to record an Another Electronic Musician track. Hopefully that exchange follows the same criteria as the school ones, and next month Jase Rex goes on a coach to Berlin for a week of Weissbier, proper snow, and an IDM rehash of this shit.

Any Miwon fans who’ve gone into malnutrition since 2008’s A to B can get excited, as The Reconstruction of Fives gives them the electronica fix they’ve been waiting for. Kröz’s synth-pop requires only minimal tweaking to fit the Another Electronic Musician mould, and as soon as he gets to work on “Amidst” you can sense his recording convalescence hasn’t wasted him. Rex’s original gets imagined here as a two-chord straight instrumental, the deep rhythms flowing like breaststroke as Kröz stacks up layers of pop. He’s fattened the bass, pruned back the drums and lit the melody with his signature lightness, creating five minutes of circling warmth that you hope will make his next album (there’s no reason it shouldn’t—his two previous LPs both made use of a cover). It’s nice to see that fatherhood has given Miwon the lullaby touch, and even nicer to see his most radio-ready instrumental has its feet in two strong places: California sunshine on one side, snow-capped Christmas markets on the other.