MICHAEL MAYER

Michael Mayer albums don’t come round too oren, which is one of many reasons why his fourth collec1on, The Floor Is Lava, is a genuine event. It’s been eight years since his last one, the collabora1ve & released on !K7; its predecessors, Mantasy (2012) and Touch (2004), took their sweet 1me, too. It’s no real surprise, given the many hats Mayer wears – globetroÄng DJ, revered remixer, inveterate collaborator, and boss of both Kompakt and Imara – that his solo produc1ons are rela1vely 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 impera1ves of the dancefloor and the lounge room, that’s as exploratory as it is func1onal. On The Floor Is Lava, Mayer seems to be taking the temperature of both the music that surrounds him (past and present), and the ideas of the industry he works within. There’s that iconic album 1tle, for a start. “The album’s mindset,” he says, reflec1ng on those four words together. For Mayer, it’s partly a cri1que 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 ba`le.” A ba`le worth figh1ng, though, and with The Floor Is Lava, the result is an album that’s varied, quixo1c, idiosyncra1c, charming, and deeply, addic1vely listenable. Throughout, Mayer finds thrills in explora1on and juxtaposi1on, allowing unexpected things to blossom and giving them their life, their plaÉorm, throwing the listener exci1ng 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 produc1ons threw samples together with gleeful abandon. Mayer men1ons 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 dialec1cal drive at its core: thesis and an1thesis leads to synthesis, but with a welcome prickliness that means you’re always excited, always engaged. It’s also produc1ve 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 men1ons ‘Immer 1’ era 90s minimal as inspira1on), slippery, Shepard-tone breakbeat through “Sycophant”, a lovely, lush vocal turn on the poppy “The Solu1on”. 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 an abstract tribute to a lost friend. It’s one of the most affec1ng moments on The Floor Is Lava. There’s also an update on 2020’s wild Brainwave Technology EP, with the surrealist gli`er- stomp of “Brainwave 2.0” (check out those handclaps!),where Mayer’s thinking about the socio-poli1cal 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 implica1ons that the resul1ng financial and educa1onal inequality will bring.” That’s The Floor Is Lava: then and now, brainwaves and nerve structures, problems and solu1ons, 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.”