If you entertain the myth story, which I'm going to do for the purposes for this entry, Parisian DJ and producer Cosmo Vitelli, the head of I'm a Cliché records, half of Bot' Ox, and a bit of a myth in his own right, hasn't slept a night since 1973. So, it was with great relief that I discovered he has two holidays scheduled this year. Unfortunately for Cosmo, but fortunately for us, they're on Panikstrasse, which I'm going to assume could be interpreted as German slang for Panic Street. The German reference point is crucial here, because across the four tracks that make up Holiday in Panikstrasse Part 1 (the first of a two-part series coming out through Berlin's Malka Tuti label) Cosmo plays with ideas abstracted from the jittery, anxious energy of krautrock and post-punk, while walking with them on the slightly smoother sider of the club landscape.

Opener' A Brand New City,' sees Cosmo setting up a spacious, spacey, and subtly hypnotic backdrop for a spoken word performance from his longtime friend Julienne Dessagne (aka Fantastic Twins). It's followed by 'Groupe Surdose' and 'Die Alraune' (ft Sebastian Lee Philipp (of Die Wilde Jagd), where Cosmo taps directly into the machine/man interfacing at the heart of the krautrock rhythm engine, dressing the songs up with rusty, windswept guitars and random incidental noises. On 'Die Alraune,' Sebastian delivers some languid German poetry over a skipping big beat, his voice echoing into Cosmo's reverberating soundworld. The EP concludes with 'Kuldip,' where Cosmo pairs arpeggiated synths and middle-eastern melodies with a clockwork groove, coming up with a mid-tempo heater that reeks of adventure and wanderlust.

I'm looking forward to hearing where Cosmo takes us for his second Holiday In Panikstrasse.

Holiday in Panikstrasse Part 1 is due for release through Malka Tuti on the 31st of May 2019.