In his recent review of Koze Presents Pampa Vol. 1, the first compilation from DJ Koze and Marcus Fink’s Pampa Records, Jonah Bromwich describes the label in terms of “humor, warmth, and the pleasure of small surprises.” Those aren’t qualities you often find attached to electronic music, at least not all together, but they’re at the heart of what makes Pampa special.Hamburg’s DJ Koze, a onetime hip-hop DJ and an affiliate of Cologne’s brainy yet hard-raving Kompakt crew, is himself a bundle of contradictions, with an early discography that includes gnarly head-banging techno and, with his former group International Pony, zany electro-pop. Since co-founding Pampa in 2009, though, he’s tempered his wilder instincts and developed a unique sound that’s both squirrelly and sensitive, wedding oddball sound design to dewy-eyed deep house. And those tendencies have set the tone for Pampa itself, as the label has grown to encompass everything from haywire modular-synth Christmas carols, to albums from Isolée, Ada, Robag Wruhme, and even the Postal Service member Dntel. Here are 10 standouts from a catalog that’s impossible to pin down.

Source: 10 Essential Tracks from DJ Koze’s Pampa Records | Pitchfork