- With this single Ellen Allien gives us three "extended" (read: DJ-friendly) versions of tunes off her recent album, Dust, plus an unreleased add-on. Dust was neither amazing nor terrible; it was simply an accessible collection of pretty, melodic numbers. These three have been chosen ostensibly because they each aim to encapsulate a particular party mood or situation, with the extra track "Searching" doing the same, making a little package that works both for people who perhaps already own the album on CD but want a spinable vinyl cut, and also as an interesting curio in its own right.
"Our Utopie" has been extended by a couple of minutes so you can choose the next record, and is the soundtrack for a sparkling early-night, starlit scene of trees with neon uplighting here and there; an introduction to dreamland. Metallophones and a yearning, voice-like synth line weave around each other. Pretty, obvious and not without inspiration, but not possessing it in bucketloads either. "Should We Go Home" leaves just enough shards of the beat until the end for people to dance to; people who presumably, when this type of music would be appropriate, would need a beat to hold on to, dazed and with little canaries circling their heads Looney Tunes-style.
The magic mushroom peak-time of "Ever" is probably the most lovely part of the album, albeit suffering from over-repetition of its main riff—it would have been better just bouncing around in arpeggios without much of a discernable hook. Twenty seconds or so are stuck in somewhere, seemingly just so that it can be called extended, but don't expect a special version. A few hours after sunrise would be the place for "Searching," with an air of extreme possibilities; a new day. It's also got an air of that kind of nameless nature-friendly electronica that you might hear played at the chillout area at Glade. That's to say that, like the others, it feels like good filler in a set of storytime techno; or would be, if we were lucky enough to have that much more of this stuff.
Tracklist A1 Our Utopie (Extended Version)
A2 Should We Go Home (Extended Version)
B1 Ever (Extended Version)
B2 Searching