Following on from Wednesday's post about Penguin Cafe Orchestra's Music For A Found Harmonium, today's various artist compilation is the 1994 that made it widely available to the clubbing generation, Cafe del Mar Volumen Uno, a double album compiled by legendary DJ from the titular beach front cafe, Jose Padilla. The Cafe del Mar series ran and ran, up to Volumen Veintitres (Volume 23- there's that number again) plus some Best Ofs, Dreams, something called the Chillhouse Mixes plus some anniversary editions. It spawned the chill out genre, double CD sets to stick on while relaxing at home in the mid- 90s. We shouldn't lay the blame for all of this at the Cafe del Mar series- what came after is not the fault of those who came first- and besides Volume 1 of Cafe del Mar is a genuinely brilliant compilation, a VA classic, a perfect selection of tracks. Volumen Dos was very fine too and the subsequent ones all feature some really good tracks- you can get up to Volumen Cinco before running into diminishing returns.
Volumen Uno is very much an ambient/ ambient house affair, with some definitive tracks, utterly essential whether heard watching the sun go down on the White Isle or coming up after a night out that ended up in a car park in Wigan in winter. It opens with Jose's own Agua, found sounds, hand drums, pan pipes and then a warm bubble bath of synths. It's followed by William Orbit's The Story of Light, six minutes of weightless drift, house rhythms eventually kicking in, chimes, wordless vocals- global ambient.
Sabres Of Paradise close side one with Smokebelch (Beatless Mix). I've written about this track before, one of those songs that has soundtracked my life in all sorts of ways- we played it at the graveside when we buried Isaac. When we did the Sabresonic Q&A at The Golden Lion in November Jagz and Gary spoke about the making of the track. It feels like it's a fundamental part of me.
Side two has Penguin Cafe Orchestra, Sun Electric's Sundance (like standing in warm rain) and Leftfield's mighty Fanfare Of Life, ambient/ dub in excelsis. Side three gives us Sisterlove's Balearic meditation The Hypnotist and then Second Hand by Underworld. This track was trailed on the sleeve as exclusive to the compilation. Underworld were at the very top of their game in 1994 and Second Hand is as good as anything else they did, nine minutes of that Underworld synth sound repeating, another wobbling synth on top, a third chirruping, a little guitar motif, everything building very gradually, no rush to hit the runway too soon. At five minutes there's a slight change, a pause almost (although everything keeps playing), some tension, the anticipation that something's about to happen, and then at six minutes twenty the kick drum starts thumping, a snare and whooosh, off we go.
Side three finishes with Ver Vlads' Crazy Ivan, all drama and stormclouds. Then we're onto side four with A Man Called Adam's wondrous Estelle, Obiman's On The Rocks and finally Tabula Rasa's Sunset At The Cafe Del Mar takes us home, a track that is less a piece of music and more a feeling pressed onto vinyl, that ends with a guitar loop and the sound of waves lapping on to the shore.
Very good compilation. I actually only had 2 compilations, volume 5 and volume 6 I think, these were compiled as a double CD, but nothing really stuck. What's also interesting about this one is that there's another good Sun Electric track called "Sundance" that I didn't know before (after "Love 2 Love" on the Music from Memory compilation "Virtual Dreams.." However, there was this track also on previous compilations). “Sundance” was also on the first album “Kitchen”, but only in an expanded R&S reissue. Therefore I couldn't know this track. Vol.1 is compiled very well and makes you want to listen to it all the way through. There are also several versions of this compilation, including a limited version with an E1 track by Knights of the Occasional Table. Which makes my heart beat faster again because I discovered this band as part of my enthusiasm for the neo dub band Zion Train in the nineties and blindly bought their first 3 LPs. KOT actually had nothing to do with Dub per se, but they had a very nice electronic sound with some very wonderful melodies and harmonies. Unimportant fun facts, but it's nice that your post triggers these memories for me. Blogging the way it should be. Thanks Adam, again!
ReplyDeleteThank you EaR, glad you enjoyed it and the memories it triggered. Volume 1 and 2 are well worth hunting down, they were re- issued together as a double cd.
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