Rating:
Genre:
Electronica
Release Date: 05/01/2007
Please Please Please follows 2000's
Für Dich and 2003's
Smallville, closing out a trilogy of
Tobias Thomas mixes for
Kompakt. Listeners familiar with the first two chapters might not be surprised that
Please Please Please also diverges from the expected path of a customary dance mix. Again,
Thomas uses the format not as an attempt to condense an ahead-of-the-curve, three-hour set into 80 minutes of nonstop intensity; instead, he challenges the ears of the most open-minded techno fans, designing a set that plays out more like
Sonic Youth's
Daydream Nation or
Wire's
154 than
Jeff Mills'
Live at the Liquid Room or even
Michael Mayer's
Immer 2. Having previously used a monologue from one of
Blumfeld's albums, nearly half of
Vladislav Delay's 22-minute
"Huone," and 12 minutes of beatless ambience,
Thomas evidently couldn't care less about doing the expected. This time out, the first beat appears around the ten-minute mark of the sequence, following a scratchy
Adolf Noise lullaby surrounded by two appearances from a drifting ambient mix of
Pantha du Prince's
"Butterfly Girl" -- which offsets a tornado-warning signal with a shimmering effect. Nine minutes of
Krause Duo's rickety minor-key
"Kingpult" sound as if they're in a constant state of fading in, eventually giving way to
Johannes Heil's claustrophobic
"Aquarius" -- a track that, unlike the aquatics-obsessed likes of
Porter Ricks and
Drexciya, actually sounds submerged, albeit in an insect-infested lagoon of black oil.
Vulva String Quartett's
"Wild Wild Berry" then rises out, at the point antsy listeners -- on the first play, at least -- might reference as the actual beginning of the mix (23:05). The beat dissolves after a few minutes, leaving you with a cluster of percussive effects and a barely present bassline thump for another seven minutes. Tracks from
the Kooky Scientist,
Thomas/
Burger,
Reinhard Voigt, and
Pachulke und Sohn build and sustain momentum for an extended passage, veering from airy and blissed-out to stripped-down and tensed-up. And then, after all that, elfin karaoke throwdown: a snugly version of
the Smiths'
"Last Night I Dreamt That Somebody Loved Me," International Pony's helium-enhanced
"Gravity," and the
Thomas/
Geiger mix of
Stella's
"Dreams." (Yes, that
"Dreams," as in the one originally written and performed by the one and only
Fleetwood Mac.)
~Andy Kellman, All Music Guide
;)
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