Compost Records

Compost Records emerged from Munich’s downbeat club culture in 1993, founded by DJ Michael Reinboth as a home for electronic music with an open, dancefloor-minded approach. Its early identity was closely tied to the Future Sounds of Jazz compilation series, which helped introduce the label’s mix of progressive downbeat, nu jazz, bossa nova, techno and drum and bass influences. Reinboth chose the name Compost because it travelled easily across languages and suggested, in his words, a “catalyst for constitution and reactions.”

The label’s music has drawn on the overlap between club records and jazz-informed listening, rather than treating either as a fixed category. Compost’s artist relationships grew largely from Reinboth’s personal connections within Germany’s downbeat scene, giving the roster a direct link to the culture that shaped the label. Its releases have also included work by artists from beyond that immediate circle, including Moodymann, Carl Craig, Laurent Garnier, Masters At Work, Âme, Dixon, Henrik Schwarz and Kruder & Dorfmeister, through original tracks, remixes or both.

Compost has maintained an independent approach to developing its artists’ reputations, resisting the licensing of its catalogue to larger labels in favour of building that work in-house. The label’s later catalogue includes musicians and projects such as Shahrokh Dini, Roberto Di Gioia, Web Web, Peter Gall, Andre Espeut, Inkswel, Charles Petersohn and Yuu Udagawa, reflecting its continued connection to musicians working across electronic, jazz and club-facing forms.

In 2015, the label’s history was documented in Soul Love: 20 Years Compost Records, a bilingual English and German book containing more than 450 photographs, alongside a download code for a 40-track compilation. The publication placed Compost’s recorded output alongside the people, images and Munich-rooted network behind it.