A chime. Synthesizer sounds that start harmonically, almost groping, slowly getting darker, softly droning, gently driving the pulse up, while beautiful voices keep wafting through the track. "Fir", the title track of KIDSØ's debut album, pulls you in an almost magical way into a sound that you want to hear and feel at the same time. It is what could perhaps best be described as danceable melancholy. Or, as Moritz Graßinger (analog synths, piano, percussions) and Martin Schneider (drums, e-percussions, video installation), sometimes smilingly say, "electronic music for people who otherwise don't listen to electronic music that often."

Both somehow hit the mark. And somehow also not, or only insufficiently. Because what the two produce as KIDSØ can hardly be squeezed into style pigeonholes or brought down by euphonious adjectives. It is electronic music at its core, that's for sure. But not the finger-in-the-air-let-us-rub-against-one-another electronic music, but rather what a Jon Hopkins produces when he has eaten the right mushrooms. With the difference that KIDSØ record this sound mostly analog and organic. KIDSØ songs also have that special, other-worldly, melancholic vibe that many mixes of the terrific "Late Night Tales" series carry, for example, or the electronically embellished pieces of an Ólafur Arnald. And yet Moritz and Martin can turn their yearning compositions live to thoroughly danceable and euphoric, as if they were written for the blue hour of a club night.

But here it should be first of all about the album: It's called "Fir" and comes out March 18 via Embassy of Music. Which makes them labelmates of, for example, Monolink, David Guetta and Björk - which somehow all fits quite well. Whereby KIDSØ release on the new sub-label esc/ctrl - a new cooperation between Embassy and ease agency, who for example conceive and execute the social media campaigns for Rammstein, Milky Chance and many others. KIDSØ recorded and produced their album in their own studio in their hometown Munich, mastered by Robin Schmidt, who has worked for HVOB, Fritz Kalkbrenner and Mumford and Sons. So also an all-rounder who is at home in the electronic, as well as in the analog - which also fits very well.

Daniel Koch (DIFFUS Magazine, Musikexpress)