Creation of Ambience
September 5, 2008 by Olwyn Fagan
Filed under Anablog
Chill out music is kind of like the prawn cocktail of the music world; having once been extremely popular at dinner parties, back in the early 90s it was considered sophisticated and on trend, yet is now more often thought of as being dated, tacky and all in all a bit sad. I am not a fan of prawn cocktail. I am, however, a fan of ambient house or chill out as it is more widely known.
This fact was brought home to me last week at around 3am in the Body and Soul area at Electric Picnic. Standing beneath a tree in the pouring rain, I was entranced by the Orb’s closing performance at the festival. Playing a mix of Dub and Deep House with a live MC the boys’ performance was without contest the highlight of my weekend. Hell, I even went out this week and purchased not one but two of their albums. In CD form! *GASP*
For me their music is not generic nor boring but rather makes a welcome change from the samey Baltimore drum loops and screechy electro synths that seem to appear on every second dance release these days. For those of you who are yet unacquainted, I’d highly recommend checking them out. For starters, here’s a snippet of one of their live performances…
[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bOLwJiXGdxc&feature=related]
You’re talking my language here Olwyn! But I must say this: if it is now seen as, as you say, “dated, tacky and all in all a bit sad” (and I don’t dispute that this seems to be the case), then I say “Good!” I love much of what is termed “Chill Out” – including all of those turn of the century compilations like the Cafe Del Mar series and “Sunset Ibiza” and other similarly titled affairs. I don’t find myself at many dinner parties, but I even like Dido – I’m always quick to defend these artists who become the thing to slag off at any given time – and “No Angel” is a decent enough record. True, a new chill out comp seemed to get released every week, but I think it’s well worth owning at least one or two of these albums. Lots of the chill out “classics” like The Beloved’s “Sweet Harmony”, The Orb’s “Little Fluffy Clouds”, Future Sound Of London’s “Papua New Guinea” and The Irresistible Force’s mix of Coldcut’s “Autumn Leaves” feature on several chill out comps. For me, this terminally “unhip” chill out music is pop music at its most atmospheric, almost like an update of the early 80s “new pop” thing.
But back to The Orb, at their peak they were absolutely great (I wrote as much on my blog “Goldmine Trash” earlier in the week coincidentally). “Adventures Beyond the Ultraworld”, “U.F.Orb” and “Live 93″ are all testament to this. But another brilliant record is The KLF’s “Chill Out”. Released on vinyl only in January 1990, it finally got a CD release in the summer of 1994. The Orb started out as a KLF side-project of course. “Chill Out”, the album, is like a more dreamy version of David Byrne and Brian Eno’s “My Life In The Bush” of ghosts. It’s full of samples of radio evangelists selling their wares, bits of old pop records, crickets chirupping and rolling stock passing in the night. Slide guitar, choirs of synths and samples of Suvan throat singers flicker in and out of earshot. Even the track titles are mysterious and beautiful. Things like “Brownsville Turnaround On the Tex-Mex Border”, “The Lights Of Baton Rouge Pass By” and “A Melody From A Past Life Keeps Pulling Me Back”.
I love both ambient house and its cousin, the slightly faster but similarly eclectic Balearic house scene because they had that “anything goes” approach to things. You were as likely to hear The Carpenters or Phil Collins at clubs like Land of Oz and Spectrum in the late 80s. It wasn’t just ironic posturing either, what mattered was certain sounds, using very familiar pop elements as ingredients in this big imaginative musical mix. A very unhip but really rather great Balearic related album is Chris Rea’s 1983 LP “Watersign”, which he recorded while on the road in Europe in the early 80s. He was influenced by all the music he was hearing in clubs across the continent and it shows on the record, just listen to “Let It Loose” or “Candles” or the v ambient “Nothing’s Happening By The Sea”. There’s a line in the single “I Can Hear Your Heart Beat” which gives it all away (“I’m in a European disco, and it’s pounding out the beat”) – listen to it alongside something like New Order’s amazing “Technique” album and it makes perfect sense. You can hear the influence of this Balearic scene on Cut Copy’s amazing “In Ghost Colours” album. If you get a chance, and haven’t done so already, have a read of David Toop’s book “Ocean of Sound”. It is one of the best music books ever written.