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Saturday 11 May 2024

V.A. Saturday

My photo shows the beach at Wallasey on the Wirral rather than the one that the Cafe Del Mar overlooks on Ibiza but a beach is a beach yeah? This week's various artists compilation is the sequel to last Saturday's Cafe Del Mar Volumen Uno, Volumen Dos. Sequels can be hard, difficult second album syndrome is very much a thing, following as perfectly pitched and sequenced a Balearic compilation as Cafe Del Mar Volumen Uno can't have been easy but on the whole Jose Padilla largely achieves it although the classic feel of the first one overshadows the second a bit- there's no Penguin Cafe Orchestra, no exclusive Underworld trance/ techno banger, no dub monster from Leftfield. A Man Called Adam and Sabres Of Paradise are both given second bites of the cherry with Easter Song and Haunted Dancehall and Jose himself is back with Sabor De Verano. 

Salt Tank were a duo from the UK, ambient/ trance DJs and producers making records throughout the 90s. Sargasso Sea is the kind of weightless, trippy, expansive early 90s ambient house that that period was made for, with seagulls, ripples of synth, echoing drumbeats and warm, padding bass. The Sargasso Sea is in the Atlantic and famously has no land boundaries and plenty of calm blue water 

Sargasso Sea

Entre Dos Aguas is by Paco De Lucia, a legendary Spanish guitarist and composer, a flamenco virtuoso. The song dates from 1973, and is considered a masterpiece of the form. 

Entre Dos Aguas

Cafe Del Mar finishes with Haunted Dancehall, from Sabres Of Paradise's album of the same name. Before that we get The Metaluna Mutant and their track Blinky Blue Eyed Sunrise, an experimental ambient/ downtempo outing from 1995, from an EP called Midi- Knight At The Oasis. It's a six minute excursion into abstract dance music and is very nice indeed. 

Blinky Blue Eyed Sunrise

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