Amongst Rhino’s latest clutch of releases comes the new 5 CD compilation ‘100 Chillout Classics’. Now lets be honest, chill out compilations are no rarity. Every bugger with a label sees fit to put together a sleeve finished in ice blue, or featuring a sun kissed beach of some nature and the usual collection of beat relieved mixes and tracks designed to make you think of having a lie down or eating chocolate.
Frankly it can get on your tits. However I’ll concede there’s probably room for one such compilation in your life and if you’re going to do it then you might as well go with the most comprehensive one. ‘100 Chillout Classics’ contains every conceivable chill out version/mix/advert fodder track you can possibly conceive. Morcheeba of course turn up on more than one occasion and the fact that they take this genre so seriously still makes me want to go on a rampage with an axe, still you have to accept that with any compilation of this size there’s going to be the good, the bad and the downright unacceptable.
If you can get your head around that then you should be alright, the beauty of a comp that goes this deep into a genre is you do turn up some unexpected gems that you wouldn’t normally get to hear. Expect lesser known offerings from the likes of New Order (Elegia) and Angie Brown (Wish I Didn’t Miss You So Much). Of course for those looking for the more obvious material the obvious candidates are all very much in place (Roger Sanchez, Moloko, Olive, Leftfield, FC/Kahuna etc). All in all, this is one of the more obvious compilations on the market and if you are looking for something to fill that ‘genre gap’ in your collection then this will do the trick nicely.
