No. 2

Twenty-five years after his debut, Carsten Meyer returns to the Erobique name with an album that feels less like a comeback than a particularly well-stocked holiday. Erobique No. 2 is warm, colourful and cheerfully unhurried, a thirteen-track escape built from disco grooves, soft Rhodes chords and synthesizers that glint like sunlight on water.

The mood is set from the titles alone. “Ahoj!”, “Acquamarina”, “Salut Les Copines!” and “Riding Low” suggest a world of balconies, road trips, cassette decks and long afternoons with nowhere urgent to be. Yet beneath the playful surface is a record assembled with considerable care, drawing together holiday disco, rhythm-box rave and richly layered pop into something loose in spirit but precise in execution.

Meyer surrounds himself with an expansive cast of friends and collaborators, including Lucas Kochbeck, Christoph M. Kaiser, Sophia Kennedy, Nicola Rost and Siriusmo. Brass, harp, violin, xylophone and dense vocal arrangements all feed into the album’s generous sound, while DJ Friction gives the finished record the warmth and weight required to carry it onto the dancefloor.

That collaborative energy helps Meyer translate the spontaneity of his live performances into the studio. His music has always thrived on improvisation, accidents and the thrill of the moment, and Erobique No. 2 preserves that sense of joyous unpredictability without collapsing into chaos.

Released on 16 June 2023, the album is both a celebration of Erobique’s past and proof that Meyer’s imagination remains restlessly active. Bright, eccentric and full of movement, it is music for actual holidays, imagined holidays and those brief moments when a rainy afternoon suddenly feels like summer.