Earth Octave Lounge volume 2 – Interchill

Interchill’s run of downtempo releases were the de facto benchmark of quality a few years ago, and it’s always nice when they come up with another compilation. Quite what you’ll make of this depends, to an extent, on your tolerance for vocals. It’s an album of two halves, I guess, with vocals quite prominent early on, subsiding to let the album really flow into a latter half that’s nothing short of orgasmic. M-Seven’s Electronic Flip is a wonderful piece of music, switching between sunshiney flamenco-tinged grooves and deep tribal percussion. It picks up strings for the closing section, which make it sound just like a tear forming in an eye. Aquila’s La Rosa is interesting in a world music way, but while I love the instrumentation and production here, I just get turned off by the vocals, which make the track sound a little too much like something you’d hear on the radio while on holiday. An instrumental version of this would be the mutt’s nuts… it’s a seriously shiny bit of studio work. Vocals rear their head again with Overflow’s Ruuhilampi… less so than with La Rosa, and for the most part they’re used as another instrument in the mix but…well they do sound like ex-Massive Attack vocalist Nicolette, and the vocal seems to take a wonderful, free-drifting piece of music and anchor it quite messily. I guess it depends on whether you prefer your chill to be without focus and free-range, or to have some sort opf grounding, guiding the rest of the music. Human Blue does nicely with Beautiful Stranger, which builds up perfectly to a gorgeous span of sounds – eventually (somehow) picking up some housey sounds which lend themselves incredibly well to this genre… has to be heard to be believed. With Crystalline’s A Sigh Becomes A Thousand Trees, the vocals are waaay down in the mix, and all the better for it – the vocalist has a great voice, but you’re not forced to listen to it, and it slides beautifully in with the rest of the sounds – all of which come together to create something quite special, fusing epic western chill with eastern sounds in a very mature and able way. Guru Shishaya’s Cagian 3 is a bit of a find, having a sort of live jazz feel to it, coupled in with evident spaced-out eastern blues, with the percussion shifting in and out giving it an almost broken-beats feel. Liquid Stranger’s Political Finger is about as deep as dub gets: at times, the silence takes over and leaves you hanging with a grin, and the instrumentation and ticklish melodies over the top are incredibly otherworldly and aren’t the sort of thing you hear every day (unless you listen to all your music underwater, which I tend to assume you don’t). Alucidation’s Skygazer (3002 remix) is utterly beautiful – the closest thing I’ve ever heard to how a sunrise looks and feels… if you see what I mean. It’s very blissful, washy dubby cuddly music, a little reminiscent of Orbital in the way the chords are meshed together, and the tune just runs on by itself, happily. Return by Frederik Ohr is one of the tastiest bits of music I’ve heard all year – really gets the shivers going up and down the spine this one. Glitchy drums build up and wash over you, with sublime chord changes and little stabs of African chanting which, rather than sounding hackneyed, balance well on the music and make for a pensive, reflective feeling that gets you thinking. Mystical Sun’s Halo is both very tasty and very distinctive, a simple four-note piano melody giving it character and keeping the lazy groove underneath tighter than a hippy’s wallet. It builds to a great crescendo, with production so clear it sounds like the music’s all in your head. Utterly gobsmacking. Finally Drift’s Ember (Rem-Ember mix) brings the album to a hazy and slightly teary close, with a very slow and understated groove, played off by a sort of dubby demiwaltz vibe to round it all off. For my money, the sheer drop dead quality of the second half of this album makes up for those vocal hiccups. And this is based on miserable old me, who hates vocals almost as much as he hates being made to eat sprouts with his sunday dinner. But whichever way you look at it, the musical heights here are well worth the payoff of having to get up and skip the odd track once in eighty minutes. I think I can live with that.