Prins Thomas - Paradise Goulash

Pitchfork 80

Prins Thomas' Paradise Goulash is seamless like a DJ set and wildly idiosyncratic like an independent radio broadcast. Spanning three CDs totaling nearly four hours' worth of music, it represents a colossal amount of effort: I don't even want to think about the licensing headaches involved in putting it together, what with its 57 songs, many of them out of print, including one dating all the way back to 1968. Unlike many commercially available mix CDs, it's clear from the intermittent tempo-nudges and occasional stretches of near-chaos that this one was mixed by hand—with all the risks, and all the added hours' worth of flubbed takes, that mixing in real time and without recourse to the sync button entails.

But despite all this, Paradise Goulash never feels like work; it is an invitation to sit back and let Thomas do the driving, and it covers a lot of ground. The first mix begins with lyrical Norwegian jazz and the third mix concludes with Kurt Vile's "Baby's Arms"; along the way, we're treated to Spanish guitar, Balearic ambient, '70s Europop, French/African electronic music, dub techno, acid, deep house, Detroit techno, Swedish space rock, Italian synth pop, and a conceptual artist's cover of Arthur Russell's "This Is How We Walk on the Moon". It's the kind of mix you might plan a dinner party around, but beware—somewhere in the middle stretch, there will be dancing on tables, and it will probably be barefoot.

Thomas is known for his eclecticism, so the range isn't surprising. What is surprising is how seamlessly it flows. Even his oddest selections seem designed to seduce, and whether he's riding the mix hard—one Ricardo Villalobos track weaves in and out for nearly 20 minutes—or simply playing out songs in full, his sleight-of-hand skills are such that you never really notice the changes.

Disc one begins with jazz, detours through groovy funk rock, and then stretches out to explore all manner of sounds you might have heard Ibiza's DJ Alfredo spinning in the early '90s. A five- or six-song stretch of chilly drum machines, slow-motion acid, and world-music accents that climaxes in A Split - Second's chugging New Beat is particularly inspired; it seems to open up a kind of wormhole in time and space, collapsing multiple places and eras into a single idea. As for the tranquil denouement, Kurt Vile and that Arthur Russell cover may be notable talking points, but the most remarkable find here might be Il Guardiano del Faro's "Ma Ci Pensi, Io E Te", an Italian easy-listening song from 1980 that sounds like John Carpenter at the Ice Capades.

Those are a few of the highlights, anyway; every listener will doubtless pick up on different moments. The sheer volume of material, combined with Thomas' knack for teasing out a given tonal or rhythmic idea across long stretches begins to lend repeated listens a kind of hallucinatory air. Where am I? Didn't I just hear this? Does this stairway lead up or down? It's rare that a mix so accurately replicates the sense of disorientation that you get from a marathon stretch of clubbing, but on Paradise Goulash, the windows are blacked out, you can't find your friends, who knows what time (or day) it is, and you wouldn't have it any other way.