(Azuli/Stomp)

There comes a time when you can’t help but ask: do we really need another CD of “chill out summer grooves?” Okay, this one has been produced by successful London house label Azuli and Ibiza’s Space, and A Man Called Adam (aka Sally Rogers and Steve Jones) are usually arbiters of good chillout taste: but, to be perfectly honest, it’s hard to notice the difference.

Despite the promise of something original – the press release reads “coming to you unlike ever before” – this disc is eighteen tracks worth of calm, pleasant familiarity. Now don’t get me wrong: these tracks are, for the most part, perfectly fine, particularly Kenji Jammer’s Holiday Classics, Meugler’s For Jean Phillipe, and the Martin Brew’s very laid-back Hopscotch. It’s just that we’ve heard them all a thousand times over with different names.

This is ‘moody’ and ‘atmospheric’ in the same way as the 400 other chill/house hybrid compilations to which we’ve been treated over the last few years. The fact that Pete Tong has described Body Language by M.A.N.D.Y. vs Booka Shade as “the best tune of the year so far” says less about the song – which is intensely boring – and more about the total scarcity of new and exciting material from which to choose.

Jazz beats; random snippets of Africa, Latin America and the Middle East; weird and wonderful vocal samples: so much potential, and yet it ends up sounding like porn music you can play at the beach.

If you love the chillout genre, or if you’re in need of some relaxing music for your summer lazing sessions, then by all means pick up a copy of this disc – it’ll do the job perfectly, and you’ll enjoy it. However, if you’ve already got a decent selection of chillout mixes, I wouldn’t exactly regard this one as a ‘must-have.’