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Today's concept of chillout music was originally an extension of the all-night clubbing experience that grew out of the UK outdoor rave scene of the late 1980's. By the turn of the millennium UK record label, festival promoter and East End bar The Big Chill took it several steps further. Founders Pete Lawrence and Katrina Larkin looked beyond the question of "what do you listen to after a big night out" and cultivated eclectic and downtempo sounds in more general terms of how both music lovers and artists might enjoy creativity differently in a Western world living at hyperspeed. If that sounds a bit new age, the quality of music on show at their annual multi-media festivals and on their album release suggests an unshakable respect for music on its own terms. The Big Chill is neither a dance culture gimmick nor shambolic hippie love-in. Careful management and a strong vision has ensured that, as The Face pointed out, "you are looking at evolutionary entertainment, rather than a temporary blip on the club scene." The Big Chill didn't invent the chillout compilation - Cafe Del Mar and Freezone and Rising High Records did - but it did create a unique musical scene in the UK. And unlike the generic blends that were being churned out by the end of the 1990's most of The Big Chill's compilations of songs and instrumentals remain truly eclectic, often surprising and sometimes wonderfully obscure. This reflects both Pete Lawrence's personal quirks and more broadly the anti-pigeonholing, all-inclusive ethos that has defined the outdoor festivals. The tendency towards slower tempos - or at least atmospheric ones - is about the only thing that unites these albums. The anything-goes ethos is naturally risky. How far can you stray into straight soul, hip hop, jazz or vocal pop without losing the mysterious, subjective qualities and atmospheric magic of great ambience? Most Big Chill comps strike a brilliant compromise. Release-wise things kicked off in 1996 with a series of compilation albums on various indie labels, now very hard to find. In 1999 came Enchanted 01, one of the first releases to appear on Big Chill Records (the label also releases artist albums and ep's). Mostly instrumental, it's a bona fide classic that segues effortlessly between, bossa beats, jazzy breaks and muted 4/4 house and electro grooves on one disc, and lush strings and electro-acoustic ambience on the other. The deeper second disc is compiled by Tim Middleton (aka Global Communication, Amba, Cosmos) and has lots of lush classically-influenced sounds. String sextet Instrumental do a lively cover of The Orb's "Little Fluffy Clouds", while deep cinematic strings on beatless tracks like Chilled By Nature's "Green Shade" are pretty and disarming without any blandness. Enchanted 02 is again mostly instrumental and with a similar structure to the first volume. CD1 leans heavily on jazzy drum breaks, gently funky basslines and lo-fi string sounds, mainly via the cut-and-paste sampling techniques of hip hop. Touches of downbeat synth pop like Hextatics "Robopop" somehow fit amongst it all and are inspired choices. CD2 downplays the sampled hip-hop sounds in favour of prettier ambient and cinematic moments, from beatless Balearic like "The Big Dream" by UK chill icon Chris Coco to deep ambient techno from Biosphere. Also from the same year is the single disc Beach (2000), a journey down the well-trodden path of what you might call Balearic downtempo. Pleasant but non-essential. Glisten returns to the diversity that BC does so well. On CD1 the experimental moments from names like Grantby and Another Fine Day add necessary balance to a handful of slick pop-lounge tracks that border on over-familiar like Gerd's "Faraway Places". This was 2001 after all, a year in which chillout comps from both the majors and independents flooded the UK and European markets and The Big Chill found itself beset my imitators. CD2 of the set is the one that really defines its own territory with a clever blend of stoned retro lounge from hip hop producers Quantic and Bonobo, dreamy ambient pop ballads (Lol Hammond, Yam Yam) and jazzy soundtrack strangeness. The Big Chill Loves You compares easily in quality to any of the previous 2-CD sets. Its probably the most daytime-sounding of the Big Chill albums to date, a sun-kissed collection of folksy melodies, warm landscapes and pop-soul-world flavours all infused with subtle electronica and drones. "Venice Beach" is a brilliant Balearic beauty with its uplifting mix of liquid synth, crying pedal-steel guitar and long arcing string washes riding over a mid-tempo drum break. Lawrence's early love of Anglo-Irish folk music ads a much welcome dimension to the album; Nature Boy's accordion and dreamy vocals, Cornhead's bagpipes and fiddle. i-Chill also stands its ground in face of the generic chill onslaught by sticking to the brand's original values: open-endedness, accessible tunes with experimental moments, and a sense of discovery that asks you actively engage despite the laid-back tempos. Big Chill Classics collects 33 tracks the last 10 years and contains enough otherwise hard-to-find gems to make it well worth the purchase. |
