Plee

They Say...

Review by Jason Birchmeier, All Music Guide

Producer Andreas Tilliander's second album as Mokira, Plee, builds upon the ideas presented by its dazzling predecessor, Cliphop, yet adds a cleaner, glossier sheen. Released a year and a half earlier on Raster-Noton, Cliphop sounded gritty and murky. Its lo-fi aesthetic may have been the result of Tilliander's limited resources at the time, but it nevertheless complemented the album's impenetrable haze of turbid ambience, making it even more difficult for the ultra-low basslines and super-altered hip-hop-style beats to surface. The magnificent result of that album set the stage for Plee, which Tilliander recorded for Mille Plateaux, a similarly acclaimed yet larger-scale German label. As mentioned, Plee builds upon the ideas Tilliander explored on Cliphop, again creating a wonderful tension between the heavy rhythms and the opaque ambience. And, again, you listen in endless turmoil, naturally longing for the rhythm but unwillingly marveling at the disorientating ambience as it overcasts whatever harmony exists within these 11 tracks. Tilliander eases you through the album with careful sequencing. He opens the album with "Qualität Im Quadrat" and "Bara Ytlig," probably the two most jarring tracks here. Following this 12 minutes or so of uneasiness, he offers the album's two standouts, the blissful "Snegsted" and then -- after the brief, interlude-like "Banham" -- the album's ten-minute centerpiece, "Lilliam." It's open road from here, the second half of the album rather tranquil relative to the volatile first half. Once you reach the end, you'll most likely feel unsure about the album. It's obviously not an easy listen, particularly the endlessly looping, off-kilter album openers. And successive listens aren't much easier. In these ways, it's very similar to Tilliander's first Mokira album, Cliphop; however, the crystal-clear production here brings the nuances of this music to the surface, while the lo-fi aesthetic of Cliphop clouded them. This is a minor difference, but it's enough to make Plee a better starting point for the uninitiated, even if Cliphop is probably the more fascinating achievement.