Elsewhere: Genre-bashing compilations hit overkill on the chill

By GRAHAM REID

It's healthy to give up on a musical genre. I'm convinced my life improved after I turned my back on folk music many decades ago, and in living memory giving up on the Irish fiddle certainly saved my sanity. Friends now never bother to invite me to an Irish pub, for which I am extremely grateful.

There's nothing wrong with these genres - well there is actually, I'm just being polite - but it was too much folk-earnestness, one jig just like another, all that Irish glumness or mindless cheerfulness.

And I actually used to like Cuban music. Then it just kept comin'.

Okay there are excellent folk, Irish and Cuban albums out there - you'd be unwise not to check out Ry Cooder and Manuel Galban's Mambo Sinuendo recommended here a month ago - but you get my drift. Too much of a good thing. Or in the case of traditional folk, too much of a po-faced thing.

Right now I'm about to give up on chill-out.

It used to be when you could turn down the bpm-ratio and turn up the Mantovani without shame. But really, how many chill-out albums do you need? (Answer: three.)

These days it's an industry - they're tele-advertising a "classic chill-out" compilation - and albums out of the Buddha Bar just keep arriving.

Well, if you are a cafe owner or so young you let someone else decide what you like, consider this as a Public Service Announcement: there are two new Buddha Bar collections.

In their customary high-sheen, evocative covers come Buddha Bar V and Siddharta: Spirit of the Buddha Bar (both Border). The title of the latter suggesting the former only captured a playlist and the real "spirit" remained elusive? Spirit is a double-disc, one labelled "emotion" and the other "passion". The fifth BB collection by David Visan is also a double-disc, one labelled "dinner" and the other "drink", again reinforcing their functionalism in an age where people have no time or inclination to choose their own dinner or drinking music. Or need to be told when to have an emotion or feel passion. Thanks Dave.

So here is the new chill-out internationalism (with composer/selector Visan interposing himself sometimes) and it includes Greek composer Mikis Theodorakis, Angelique Kidjo, Mondo Candido, Femi Kuti, some up-tempo things, lots of ethnically non-specific sounds, and most of it from names you've never heard before and are unlikely to again. Until the next Buddha Bar collection.

It's all really-really nice. But you won't want to be under a bright light being asked what you remembered off them. I couldn't, and I only had economical single-disc samplers of each. Yep, they are that chilled-out. And really-really nice, especially if you have a cafe.

But enough of this negativity. Germany's Stereo Deluxe label has a logo of two lounge chairs back-to-back, but they have released tasteful, genuinely interesting stuff from name-players like Mo Horizon's, The Funky Lowlifes, Bobby Hughes Combination, and especially Boozoo Bajou, whose Satta album of two years ago still commands stereo-time round my way.

The odd tracks BB have popped on to Stereo Deluxe collections have been pretty attractive too - and they kick off the collection Stereo Deluxe One (Border) with their excellent swamp funk Camioux from Satta featuring the dark vocals of Wayne Martin.

Elsewhere those usual suspects appear (good) and there's a downbeat but funky feel throughout. The Bobby Hughes Combination typically have a direct connection to slinky 70s soul-funk on Magnificent Mr Morgan and Karins Kerma (from their Nhu Golden Era album), and newcomers like the Strike Boys (the brooding Cocaine is a Sin) fit in seamlessly. Good sampler from a tasty label, and anything which advances the cause of Boozoo Bajou has got to be good.

The BoozBaj boys - Peter Heider and Florian Seyberth - have compiled their own tribute to those who influenced them (and included themselves) on the excellent Juke Joint (Border) which is a kind of Back to Mine and illustrates their eclectic nature.

It kicks off with Primal Scream's lazy Star (with reggae legend Augustus Pablo on melodica) then slides into their Camioux, on through Groove Armada with Richie Havens, then their remix of Mousse T's soul-poetry and organ-coloured Gourmet de Funk. It steers that intelligent, seductive mood for the whole 20 tracks and confirms that if you only need three chill-out albums, a Boozoo Bajou would be one of them.

And finally SlowHill make it into this column by virtue of being from a chilly place. They come from Finland, and their delicious Finndisc (EMI) could be mistaken for chill-out music, but exists at the intersection of the soundscapes on some ECM jazz albums and the lazy, considered ambience of Neil Halstead (whose Sleeping on Roads was in our "best of" albums list last year). The brains behind it - turntablist DJ Slow and saxophonist Tappe Rinne - have sampled from the EMI Finland back-catalogue of airy jazz and created a fusion of jazz, trip-hop, ambient and yes, even chill-out. It won't be tele-advertised but it's up there with Juke Joint as the most interesting non-chill-out, chill-out album around right now.

Other than them, I'm giving up on chill-out for a while. It's getting far too mellow in here.